


A Fool's Errand

by Thursdays_Dove



Series: Wheatley X Chell [2]
Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family Feels, Flashbacks, I am not very good at picking out tags please forgive me x.x, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Premature Birth, Psychological Trauma, plenty of angsty angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21776926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thursdays_Dove/pseuds/Thursdays_Dove
Summary: Out of all the things Chell had known she would carry with her upon leaving Aperture, the last thing she would have ever expected was a child - much less the child of the power mad android she had thrown out onto the moon in a last ditch effort to escape with her own life.
Relationships: Chell/Wheatley (Portal), Past Wheatley/Chell
Series: Wheatley X Chell [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569403
Comments: 15
Kudos: 76





	1. Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone, and welcome back! I did decide to continue on after Survive, but I wanted to post this under its own title. This may end up being two parts long - still a work in progress, don't judge me yet. :P
> 
> Anyway, here is the first bit. Hope you all enjoy and thank you again for reading. :3
> 
> 05/26/2020 - UPDATE - Several people have asked about this, so I feel I need to clarify. Please be aware that in this fic, Wheatley is not a core; he is an android. I don't plan on going into details about it throughout the course of the story (though I may, if it fits in with things), but for his portrayal here (and in the prequel Survive), he was a human that had mechanical alterations done to him. I apologize if this has caused any confusion for anybody. If this does not suit your tastes, I understand. Thank you!

Out of all the things Chell had known she would carry with her upon leaving Aperture, the last thing she would have ever expected was a child - much less the child of the power mad AI she had thrown out onto the moon in a last ditch effort to escape with her own life. No, instead she had escaped not only with her own life, but the life of another smaller, more helpless being. Now, thrust suddenly into the midst of this new world on the surface, Chell had to admit to herself that she sometimes barely understood what all she needed in order to support herself, let alone her unborn child. She of course had all of her basic human instincts intact and knew how to satisfy those, but trying to weave all of this into a society that she barely understood was another thing altogether.

One other thing she had taken with her from Aperture was her sense of determination to overcome. Overcome what, it did not matter, she just knew she felt a powerful urge to move on in the face of anything, even when it came to wrestling with her own issues, both physical and mental. Not that she truly acknowledged the mental side of things - that was all neatly tucked into a corner that she pretended did not exist, despite its quiet whispers to her whenever she dared to let her mind wander for too long. But at least physically, she was determined to face whatever life and the world had to throw out at her, even when her body became a complete stranger to her as it swelled with the life growing inside of it.

While Chell's body had mostly recovered from the battering it sustained during her time at Aperture, it apparently did not like the idea of carrying a baby comfortably, much less full term. As a result, Winter was born ten weeks early on a bitter January morning, the winds of the season after which he was named whipping pellets of freezing rain into every available crevice and blanketing the entire area in a layer of dangerous, thick ice.

Getting Chell to the hospital in a middle of this had been a challenge in and of itself, especially after a massive amount of blood loss led to a loss of consciousness in the woman. The baby was delivered via cesarean section after a number of complications which almost ended in tragedy both for the newborn and his mother. Chell herself nearly died after her close call with the massive amount of blood loss, while little Winter survived only by being hooked up to machines and breathing apparatuses. Needless to say, they both had a long road of recovery ahead of them.

Both Chell and little Winter spent weeks in the hospital under close monitoring, the hospital and its staff using every available resource to ensure that the community's newest members would survive. Once Chell had recovered enough to be able to move more freely, she spent every available moment by her son's side, refusing to leave him even for a second, even though she could not stand to see him hooked up like he was. His tiny, helpless, fragile body covered in nodes and wires, all keeping track of his vitals and, essentially, keeping him alive. It made her feel sick, and what made the feeling even worse was the image that insisted on forcing itself into her thoughts - the image of the baby's father, crazed, all hooked up and surrounded by wires as well, only not for life support but for far more dubious reasons.

The juxtaposition of these images in her mind, both real and imagined, almost made her want to rip all the cords off and out of her son. He was not like _him_. He would _never_ be like _him_ , not even down on this fundamental level. Chell would see to that. She would see that he grew up safe, protected, confident,

( _I. AM NOT. A MORON!)_

and, above all, level-headed.

The medical staff encouraged her to rest as much as possible, seeing as she was still recovering from her own medical maladies, but she refused. She even went to the extent of flat out ignoring anyone who tried to make her leave for any reason, even if it was for her own good.

She especially ignored her social worker, Jan, who for some reason had taken it upon herself to act as sort of matriarch to this broken little family. Perhaps she felt a sense of responsibility towards the enigmatic woman she had helped rehabilitate, and by extension her poor little son, who was having a hard time of things as well.

Whatever it was, both her loitering and doting was beginning to get on Chell's nerves. She did not need any help. What she needed was to be left alone with her son.

But perhaps she had come to understand more about Chell than she was admittedly comfortable with.

After several weeks of sleepless days and nights, worrying, Chell grew frustrated by the struggles she and her son were going through. Most recently, her struggle was getting the little baby to latch on and feed from her breast. As if it was not bad enough that her limited milk supply had all but dried up during her own stint in recovery, Chell had been told by the nurse to not get her hopes up too high either way, that many premature babies went without breastfeeding altogether, and that this was not necessarily a bad thing, seeing as feeding him formula would help him grow faster at any rate. But Chell, being the most stubborn human being on the planet, of course refused to give up, refused to believe that she could fail at something as basic as being able to breastfeed her own child.

This was where Jan came in. She popped in for a surprise visit one day to find Chell gently stroking her baby's tiny head as he slept in the incubator, silent tears streaming down her face. The younger woman looked up, startled, before quickly ducking her head and moving to wipe away the evidence of her perceived weakness.

"What you are feeling is completely normal, dear. It's called postpartum depression. It's nothing to hide or feel embarrassed about, and that goes double for you," stated Jan gently, offering a boxed meal to Chell, who of course did not even move to receive it. She instead held back a grimace. She was _not_ experiencing postpartum depression. She was just frustrated that she could not breastfeed her son and she was feeling overwhelmed by the instincts dictating that she do so.

Besides...

Even if it was postpartum depression... it was not _just_ that. It was a culmination of many things, things she could never have explained with any amount of articulation, not that Jan or anyone else would have ever believed or understood her. No, this was something that ran so deeply inside of her, she could no more escape it than she could ever truly escape the facility. It was something that was woven into her entire being, something that had touched her from the moment she awoke the first time all those ( _thousands_ ) of years ago and made her way through testing chamber after testing chamber only to nearly become another victim of the facility's homicidal AI. It was something that had only been further wound into her by what _he_ had done. Perhaps it had even been a part of her from the very beginning, something from before her memories began, something in her very chemistry or even DNA.

It was most certainly not anything anyone was ever privy to, either. Ever.

So, rather than communicating any of this to her unwarranted caretaker, Chell instead responded by not responding.

Much to her chagrin, the older woman took this as her cue to berate her instead, "Oh, and do you think that starving yourself is going to help your little one? You need to eat."

She offered the box again.

Chell glared.

At which point her stomach decided to betray her by making a long, drawn-out, nearly pathetic noise, effectively shattering the tension.

With a sigh, the younger woman reached out and took the proffered box, settling back into her chair and opening it. Roast beef, vegetables (sans potatoes), and rice - her newfound favorite meal. She narrowed her eyes, wondering at what point Jan had become such a staple in her new life as to remember what her favorite foods were. In the end, she was admittedly too hungry to argue and also had to concede that Jan was right in that she needed to feed herself so that she could better provide for her little son.

"Precious little lamb," said Jan while Chell quietly began to tuck into her meal, "His color looks a lot better today. Putting on good weight, too. He's a fighter like his mother, for sure."

Jan sent a small smile in Chell's direction, but she was too busy taking her time with chewing each of the individual pieces of food to notice. She had the most methodical way of doing most everything, even something as simple as eating her food, like it was a puzzle, Jan had observed. It was quite curious and spoke great volumes of what she had been through and where she had come from, though the language of those volumes was not one that Jan - nor anyone else - was able to translate. Jan thought that her young patient remembered far more than she was letting on, brain damage or not, but she also knew better than to push that matter.

Certain other matters, however, did need to be pushed.

"Chell," she said softly as she watched the younger woman eat the meal she had prepared for her, "Can I ask what you are planning on doing when you and Winter get out of here?"

( _We'll get out of here. Together. You and me.)_

Chell spent a long time chewing on a piece of meat, much longer than necessary, but to Jan's credit, she waited patiently. Chell amused herself with the thought that the woman was wasting her time waiting patiently for an answer she would not receive and made it a point to take another slow bite before again taking a long time to chew. Jan had to have known at that point that she was avoiding answering the question, and again the woman proved to be more adept at reading her than she liked.

"Bringing home a newborn is a scary and confusing experience for anyone, and I can only imagine it is especially so for you," she said. The fact that this was due, in part, to Chell still struggling to fit in with the rest of her fellow human beings after appearing from out of nowhere under extremely mysterious circumstances was left as subtext. Though Chell did wonder what Jan actually knew of what she was going through - the woman had never had any children of her own, much less one who had to be hooked up to machines in order to survive.

"Are you going to continue working at the library?"

In response to this, Chell shrugged and took in another small piece of food.

"How about care for Winter? You don't need me to tell you that he is going to require round the clock care."

Chell took a second to think over what Jan was getting at. She was more than capable of continuing her job at the library - it was quiet and easy work, after all, perfect for someone in her physical and mental condition (not that there was anything wrong with her on either front, of course) - and she was learning more and more every day about how to care for a baby, even one with special needs. What else could she do but carry on with the deck of cards

_(Ace of fours - the best hand. Unbeatable, I imagine.)_

she had been handed?

Of course, before returning to work, she was going to need to find a babysitter...

Chell all at once knew what Jan was going to say before the words were even out of her mouth. She stopped eating and gave the other woman one of her hallmark blank stares. If there was one thing she hated above all else, it was the feeling that she was about to be manipulated. It immediately put her on guard and any doors that might have been open at that moment all slammed shut.

Irritated, she hastily moved to take back the reigns. She hardened her gaze and signed a single word, _"No."_

Jan, seeming to be completely unsurprised by her patient's short response, said, "Now, if there is one thing I have come to learn about you, dear, it is that you are far too stubborn for your own good and don't know when to ask for help-.."

Chell huffed and started to sign out an angry retort, but Jan beat her to the punch by standing up and going right on with what she was saying,

"...-So I'm going to just say that _should_ you need any help... my door is always open."

Chell, still feeling a bunch of unchecked emotions roiling through her, rolled her eyes and signed, _"I hope you don't mean literally, because it is barely ten degrees outside right now."_

She was fully expecting a snarky remark in return for her own sarcasm, but what she received instead was a small, friendly smile from the older woman. She could tell that she had more to say, but that she was choosing not to say it. Chell was not sure if she was glad for this or not. After everything that had happened in the last few weeks - hell, the last few _however long_ \- she was rearing for a fight and ready to take it all out on this stupid woman who dared to care about her, or at least who dared to try to convince her that she cared about her. Just who in the hell did she think she was, coming in here like she owned the place. Offering help where it was not warranted. She reminded her of an overbearing mother - a thought which made her wonder how she even knew what an overbearing mother was like, but was not enough to make her stop and examine it any further than needing it as a point of reference for how she was feeling in the current moment.

Whatever the case, Jan wisely decided to leave, even though she had not been there for very long at all. This, at least, Chell was glad for, because she truthfully did not know what she would have done had Jan decided to stick around any longer after her little manipulative stunt. About all she did know was that it was not going to be good.

The moment her social worker closed the door behind her, Chell got up to throw the rest of her food into the trash. Then she sighed, sat back down, and decided there was no point in wasting it now, not since she was still actually hungry and needed it to help her stupid body produce as much milk as possible despite its stubbornness on the matter.

As she begrudgingly went about eating the rest of the roast beef, her eyes settled on the sleeping form of her little son, his tiny chest rising and falling in the rapid, short breaths that the medical staff had assured her was normal. The light fluttering of his eyelids, much fuller and peaceful-looking than they had been during those first few days of life. The small suckling motions he made in his sleep, probably dreaming of the only thing he really knew at that point. His little fingers, so small, and she was already wrapped entirely around them. She would do anything for him, absolutely anything. There were so many uncertainties in her life right now; but of that, at least, she was certain.

Chell allowed herself a hint of a smile.

His color, she decided, did look better.


	2. Help

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a head's up, I wanted to try a different kind of formatting with this chapter. I hope it is not too confusing. If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you again for reading! :)

Taking care of an infant, as it turned out, was not the most challenging part of motherhood for Chell - it was simply finding the time to take care of herself, something she was finding herself putting by the wayside more and more as the days went by. She ate the meals both Jan and a few of her coworkers had been gracious enough to provide for her, but both her trust and acceptance of their help stopped there. She did not want anyone coming in to help with the baby, or for company or any other reason, for that matter. She simply accepted the gifts, with as few hand gestures as possible, before retreating back into the comfort of her small two bedroom apartment, as if the stacks of books and array of houseplants could provide some kind of protection for her.

Jan was the only person she allowed into her abode, and even that was only during their scheduled weekly visits through the humanitarian program. During each and every one of these visits, the woman asked Chell how the breastfeeding was going (it wasn't - but she told her it was going just fine anyway); how she was tolerating her pain medication (she wasn't - truth was, after reading the side effects she became worried that she would not be able to respond appropriately to her baby's needs, but all the same she told Jan she was fine); and how she was feeling emotionally (again, she wasn't - feeling _anything_ , that was, and some distant part of her told that that should scare her, but again all she told Jan was that she was fine).

Now, by this point Chell could admit to herself that she did, in fact, genuinely like Jan. Sure, her doting could be a bit annoying at times, but Chell was aware that it was just part of her personality and probably a large driving force behind her choice of career. However, an equally large part of her did not intuitively _trust_ Jan. Even after the better part of a year with Jan helping bridge all kinds of gaps for her, Chell was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. It left her at a constant impasse with herself and therefore with Jan as well. It left her with a subconscious need to test her at every turn, to see where the weakness in her facade lay, convinced that at some point she would find it and prove herself right.

Still, Jan remained as patient as ever with her, even when she was at her absolute worst. It took a whole month after both she and Winter were discharged from the hospital, in near-perfect health, before Chell began to fail at concealing just how disheveled and exhausted she was. Upon seeing this, Jan flat out offered to watch Winter for the day so that she, Chell, could grab a shower and some much needed rest. Chell declined this offer with abject vehemence, unable to stop the scowl from forming on her face, and signed to Jan her heavily used lines of " _I am fine_ " and " _I can take care of things on my own_." Jan did not appear to be convinced, but at the same time her reaction to Chell's response lacked any amount of surprise.

That was fine. Chell was not surprised by Jan's response either, which was to quietly rise from her seat and take her leave. That is, she was not surprised until the woman paused and gazed around her apartment, as if taking in the scenery and reading it, analyzing it, and therefore reading and analyzing Chell herself.

A moment later, she was proven correct.

"I realize your distaste for any kind of electronics or technology, dear," she said calmly, but not without a hint of interest in her tone, her mild gaze returning to meet Chell's. It took all of her strength not to show any kind of surprise or discomfort from Jan's observations.

"Still," she continued and pulled from her pocket a small electronic device and placed it on the end table next to one of the piles of books. She then left without another word.

The moment the door closed behind her, Chell stood, wincing, cradling a milk drunk Winter against her shoulder, and carefully approached the device Jan had left behind. Studying it, she saw only a single button on it. Although, logically, she knew what it was, something about it made her feel uncomfortable all the same and she put the thing back down in a hurry and left it there.

A few days later, Chell had to admit even to herself that she felt so dirty, so grimy, it was beginning to make her feel the way she had back when she was still in-...

Well, that line of thought made up her mind in a hurry. After getting Winter fed and settled down for the time being, with his current schedule she figured she would have at least thirty minutes to get cleaned up and find something to eat before he woke back up.

She padded into the bathroom, leaving the door open so that she could hear what was going on in the other rooms, and leaned against the counter for support while she undressed. She studied the amount of blood in her padded underwear, decided that it was a normal amount, straightened-..

And then unwittingly caught sight of herself in the mirror and immediately wished that she had not.

Her body was a complete roadmap of scars. Well, maybe not complete, she supposed - there was plenty of room for more, but then she had not realized how many she had. She looked very much as the doctors had described her - like she had been torn apart and stitched back together. Her eyes passed briefly over some of the smaller ones (left hip, straight, shallow but enough to leave a mark - grazed by a stray turret bullet; right forearm, moderately sized, asymmetrical - caught off-guard by a small back-splash of acid from something (she couldn't remember what) landing in it at just the right angle; another blip on her right arm, higher, closer to the elbow, jagged - she was not sure what had caused that, but it looked old) and settled on the wide, discolored, undulating blotches that marred at least half of her entire torso, stretching from her right shoulder all the way down to her opposite hip. There were long, careful lines running down the middle of these blotches where she had been literally sewn back together.

_(What?! Are you still alive?! You are joking! You have got to be kidding me!)_

A shudder ran through her and she quickly looked away, her eyes briefly grazing over the newest scar, long and pink, at the base of her abdomen, where she had been cut open yet again, this time to remove her distressed infant from her womb in order to save them both - another scar to remind her of-..

No. She shook her head against it. This was exactly why she hated getting undressed, even to shower. Part of why, at least. No. She was fine. Everything was fine. She just needed to get cleaned up and then she would feel a lot better. Right as rain, even.

_(Everything will be right as rain, luv. You'll see. Not that I personally know too much about rain and its ability to be either right or wrong, or- or anything but wet, really, but uh-.. uggh, just take it or leave it, yeah?)_

Feeling her heart rate increasing with alarming rapidity, she climbed into the shower and strained to turn the faucet on. Stupid abdominal muscles, making everything difficult, even the simplest of tasks. The doctors and Jan had both told her to expect it to take months, maybe even a whole year, before she felt right in that department again. In the interim, she would need to take her pain medication and take it easy, two things she was not currently doing.

She closed her eyes against the hot spray of the water, allowing it to sting against her face. Maybe if she stood in it long enough, it would wash away everything. Maybe if she turned the heat up high enough, it would burn everything off her. Maybe it would melt into her, through her, and down the drain, spinning slowly at first and then faster and faster, falling, falling...

_(Falling, falling, far, far down, down...)_

_(Could a MORON PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT?! Huh? Could a moron do THAT?!)_

Completely against her will, a sharp gasp wracked its way out of her. She shivered even though the water was scalding hot. She would not cry. She would never allow herself to cry because of _him_. Nobody deserved that of her, _him_ least of all. And yet-...

She was so tired. She was tired in every way possible, in every aspect, on every level, completely and irrevocably. She could not recall a time when she had ever _not_ been tired. It was the kind of tired ache that had at one point ceased to be a mere feeling and had gradually become who she was. She was so tired and yet she had to go on, had to move on. Move on from what? Well, she supposed it was from everything. She had to move on from it all, otherwise... she did not know what would become of her otherwise. And she had to be better than that, better than what _they_ had done to her. She had to be better, and she had to be stronger - forever and always. Winter depended on her. He needed her, and in some strange codependent way she needed him, too. The thought, the fear, of something happening to him tore her apart in a way nothing else did. Never mind what all had happened to her - that was all not only insignificant in comparison, but it was something she dare not think about, lest she have to face those voices that were still leaking through and into her thoughts, unbidden - she could not bear the thought of anything, _anything_ , happening to her little son.

Her son...

All at once, she was pulled from her thoughts at the realization that she could hear him crying. Her baby was crying; he needed her. When had he started crying? How long had it been? He must be scared and wondering why she had left him, while she had been standing there, lost in her tangle of thoughts, _relaxing_...

She should have known better than to take even a moment away from him. Forcing back all of those invasive thoughts, Chell stooped to turn off the shower-...

...-and then let out a loud, sharp gasp as pain shot through her. If she had been able to, she would have cried out at the sheer intensity of it. In a moment of panic, she blindly reached out and grabbed onto whatever she could - the shower curtain - to stop herself from toppling over, but all she managed to accomplish was to pull the entire thing down with her and into a twisted, wet heap on the bathroom floor. She narrowly avoided cracking her head open on the sink counter, but that did little to alleviate either her predicament or her pain.

Weakly, she grasped onto the rim of the toilet and tried to pull herself up, and then her jaw popped as her mouth opened in a silent scream, an entire choir of pain singing through her entire body, igniting every nerve in a serenade of agony. For the first time since arriving home from the hospital, she felt like kicking herself for ignoring her doctor's instructions and not taking that damn pain medication. Sure, it made her fuzzy-brained and a bit loopy, hence why she had stopped taking it the moment she was released from the hospital, but at least she would be able to pull herself upright.

But pain or no pain, meds or no meds, she could still hear her baby's cries. By this point he had worked himself up into a thin wail. She had to get to him. He had never had to wait so long for his needs to be tended to.

Gritting her teeth together so hard her jaw would feel sore for a couple of days afterwards, Chell managed to pull herself first onto her elbows and then onto her hands and knees, and began the slow process of crawling back out of the bathroom and into her room, where Winter would be, crying and waiting for her to help him. She managed to make it to the bathroom doorway before the still-healing muscles in her abdomen spasmed angrily and she gasped and went down again.

By this point, she was aware that tears were streaming down her face. But they were not from the pain, no (not entirely), they were from the frustration of not being able to reach her crying infant and the realization that she was going to need help, from the realization that she was going to have to go against one instinct to see to another. If she could barely pull herself up off the floor, how on earth was she going to pick up Winter? Never mind her own pain, what if she dropped him in the process?

Loathe as she was to admit to defeat, Chell was at least sensible enough to realize that for the sake of her baby, she would need to ask for help. She crawled her way over to the end table in her living room, trembling, reaching out and pulling the thing over to where it banged against the floor, scattering books and papers and the lamp everywhere as it shattered in the process, and, more importantly, the pager Jan had given her. She breathed in sharply, closed her eyes, and pressed the button,

_(Part five! Boobytrap the stalemate button!)_

before letting out a breath and falling back onto the floor, curling into herself, as if that was going to help with the pain but unable to block it out no matter what she did.

For a long while, she laid there, waves of pain coursing through her body and crying to herself at hearing the helpless cries of her little baby in the other room, so close and yet so far away, crying at her own physical weakness, her body's betrayal of her... She could feel-...

She could feel..

The water

_(blood)_

running off her body and forming a cold

_(warm)_

puddle around her.

There was the high-pitched wailing

_(alarms or sirens, loud, ringing in her ears - no, all around her, reverberating, vibrating the very breath within her lungs)_

of her infant son in the other room.

A terrible shuddering

_(Was the room falling apart around her or was she falling apart?)_

and a deep, dark chuckle.

_(Look out! I'm right behind you!)_

She gasped, her eyes flying open just as the front door of her apartment flew open,

_(No, of course I'm not, luv. Of course I'm not.)_

and there stood Jan, silhouetted against the light from the hallway just outside. She took one look at the situation - Chell, sprawled onto the floor, naked, wet, shampoo still in her hair - and rushed over to her side, stooping to help her up.

" _Chell_ , what on earth...?!" Jan started and then flinched in dismay when Chell, instead of accepting her assistance, roughly pulled out of her grasp. The action sent an electric shock of pain through Chell, causing her to gasp and fall back, but yet she again deflected Jan's hands as she again moved to help her up.

"What are you on about, young lady?" she scolded.

Jan must have seen something in her eyes, something Chell wasn't even aware of otherwise she would have done away with it before it even had a chance to present itself, because she looked more concerned than ever.

"Chell," she said softly yet firmly, "Do you know where you are?"

When Chell finally focused on her, Jan started for a third time as Chell again pushed roughly at her, this time letting out a sigh that was half-way between pain and exasperation. What was this stupid woman staring at? Couldn't she see that she was fine? Was she really not understanding why she had gone out of her way to call her over? What good was she?

Chell grit her teeth and, shaking uncontrollably, signed out, _"Baby."_

"You stubborn-... The baby?" Jan started before closing her mouth and rushing into the other room, where Chell could hear her gently shushing and cooing at her son. It did little to settle him down, which, in turn, did little to settle Chell down.

As Chell was struggling to push herself in a more upright position, Jan returned to the scene holding a still-crying Winter against her shoulder, patting his back and attempting to soothe him. Chell winced and reached out for the baby but Jan gave her her sternest look yet.

"You are absolutely drenched and covered in soap. And surrounded by glass. You get back into the shower and finish washing up, I will take care of Winter and get this mess cleaned up."

Chell glared at her and signed, _"No. Give him to me."_

"You called me all the way over here just to hand the baby to you while you remain on the floor in obvious pain and covered in glass?"

Chell started to sign out a further argument, but Jan tutted and, with more strength than Chell was aware the woman even had, tucked an arm under own arms, around her back, and hauled her to her feet, all while maintaining a grip on the baby. Too tired and in too much pain to argue further, she allowed Jan to guide her back into the bathroom. Once Chell was seated on the toilet, Jan fixed the shower curtain rod. She then glanced around the bathroom, searching for something which Chell guessed a moment before she mentioned it.

"You removed the chair that you were supposed to use while showering - Why?"

Chell just sat there, breathing, and refused to answer. Jan momentarily left the room and came back in with the chair in tow. She returned it to its place in the shower and ushered Chell back in after it. Of course, she refused to budge, which prompted Jan to leave the room again before returning moments later with a full bottle of formula.

"Now," said Jan as she propped the bathroom door open to allow the steam to vent and sat down on the toilet seat, never minding the fact that she was getting wet from when Chell had been sitting there moments before, "Winter and I will wait right here for you. See, he is doing just fine now. And after you are done with the shower, you are going to take your medication and get yourself some sleep."

Chell let out an annoyed sigh, purposely loud so as to let Jan know of her displeasure. But, in the end, she had to reason with herself that she was really in no position to argue right now, not with her abdominal muscles still cramping and spasming, sending shockwaves of pain through her. She would take the damn pills and sleep and then tomorrow, she reasoned, tomorrow she would send Jan on her way and make sure to use that stupid shower chair from now on to avoid this from ever happening again. Or, even better, avoid taking a shower altogether, thus eliminating the possibility of this ever happening again in any form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is totally random and unrelated to this story, but I recently stumbled upon some very old portalkink prompts and man.. why are there so many good ones?! I might have to give a few of them a try.


	3. Fear

When Chell awoke some time later, she was dazed and confused-.. and in pain, as the medication had worn off at some point. With a few fleeting, incoherent images of things she wished she could forget, she grimaced as she carefully rolled onto her side and used the bed as leverage to swing her legs around and over the side of the bed. Her entire body strained with the effort, apparently still pissed off at her for her impromptu floor ballet yesterday, but she pressed her teeth together and finally was able to pull herself onto the edge of the bed where she sat for a moment.

While waiting for the worst of the pain to subside, her eyes fell upon her son's bassinet from where it was set up right next to her bed-...

And immediately went into panic mode when she saw that it was empty.

Meds forgotten and her heart in her throat, she stumbled out of bed, catching herself on the wall, and edged herself out into her living room, chest heaving with the effort. She was nearly in hysterics by the time she stumbled into the living room to find Jan sitting there on the floor with her infant son before her, cooing at him after having just finished changing his diaper.

She was totally nonplussed when Jan, without even looking up, smiled and said, "Just cleaning up a little stinky," - She leaned over the baby, her voice going all high-pitched - "You were saving that just for me, weren't you?" - before going back to normal as she re-addressed Chell - "Go on, have a seat, dear - I will bring him to you."

Chell hesitated, as she did not like being told what to do, but then her body reminded her that she was still in pain. As she lowered herself onto the loveseat, Jan came over and deposited a fussy Winter back into her arms.

With a shaky sort of sigh, feeling overwhelmed and about a thousand other things she could not even begin to name or express, she held the baby against her shoulder, tucking her face in against his and inhaling, relieved by his scent as it washed over her. Maybe it was something leftover from the day before, or perhaps it was something leftover from the disjointed nightmares she had already mostly forgotten, or an accumulation of a bunch of leftover things she had yet to touch upon, whichever, it sent an overpowering swell of emotion through her.

She then went about checking over him - his hands, his feet, counting every thin, dark strand of hair on his head. Everything seemed to be in order, but still she shot Jan an accusatory look.

Either the other woman did not recognize that she was being challenged, she misinterpreted, or she chose to ignore the look altogether, because she smiled softly and said, "Everything was fine, dear. Your little boy is an absolute angel."

Winter continued to fuss, as if in direct contradiction to this, turning his head into Chell's chest and opening his mouth, searching. Chell wanted to continue glaring at Jan, but she instead flushed in response to her son's nuzzling. She felt supremely uncomfortable because Jan was standing right there, watching her, and there was the fact that for weeks she had been lying to Jan about her ability (or lack thereof) to breastfeed her baby. True, she had bottle-fed Winter on multiple occasions during Jan's visits, but usually she had a bottle made up and ready to go for such instances, under the guise that she had pumped the milk earlier and did not feel comfortable nursing him in front of her (which was not exactly a lie, considering her self-consciousness at her disfigurement). Other than that, she never nursed him in front of Jan, nor did she pump. It was not something she wished to talk about - or sign about, not that there was much she wanted to say either way - and she just knew that the other woman would have questions once she realized she had been lied to about it.

Chell moved to sign to Jan that she wanted her to leave, so that she could make up a bottle for the baby and avoid this whole situation, but then Jan went into the kitchen and reappeared moments later with a bottle, already warmed and ready to go. A look passed between the two women, but no words were exchanged, despite the strange mixture of irritation and relief that came flooding through her. She was irritated because she hated that Jan seemed to be able to get inside her head and that was the last place she wanted anyone to be - not that she wanted anything to do with anyone in any way. On the other hand, she was relieved because she would not have to explain anything, or so it seemed at that point. But then again, if Jan was already inside her head, how long would it be until she found a way to use it all against her?

There was that insurmountable impasse again, the one thing so far that Chell had not been able to overcome - and she had been faced with homicidal AI's, turrets full of bullets meant solely for her, pits of acid, and many other situations that would have killed the average person.

Chell took in a breath and let it out slowly, willing herself to calm down. She did not want a repeat of the day before.

As she set to getting her baby fed, she looked at Jan and made a gesture by pointing at her wrist and then shrugging.

"You were asleep a little over

_(99999...)_

_(Hello...?)_

fourteen hours," Jan said as she went about collecting the dirty diaper and putting it into a bag with the rest to be washed later.

Chell openly gaped at her before realizing she was gaping and forcing her face back into its usual guarded expression as much as she could, which was not unlike the struggle she briefly experienced trying to fit into a pair of pants she had been able to fit into just fine less than a year ago before giving up. Jan, on the other hand, only continued to wear that little smile of hers that told Chell she knew and understood much more than she was letting on. Chell wanted to hate that look, because only someone who was hiding their true nature smiled all the time like that, but she did not want to give anything more away to Jan than she already had by calling her over in the first place the day before. Besides, the highly logical part of her (which was still struggling against the broken part of her) claimed that if Jan had wanted to really do her any wrong, she could have easily done so in the fourteen hour interim while she was asleep.

Strangely enough, as that thought crossed her mind, something inside of her that had been continually coiled up since her escape finally began to relax. She had been asleep for fourteen hours and nothing bad had happened - outside of her head, anyway.

"Now, I made you up something to eat," said Jan, regaining her attention, "It is in the refrigerator, ready for you to re-heat whenever you are ready. Here is your medication," she handed over the pills and did not stop to make sure she took them before turning away

_(Trust me - I need you to trust me.)_

and gathering up her shoulder bag and a few other things. "I will see you at our scheduled time later this week."

The woman turned to leave, and Chell, before she even had a second to realize what she was doing, reached over and grabbed the pager off its spot on the end table, briefly noting that her books and everything else had been returned to its proper place. She pressed the button on it and watched as Jan paused in the doorway, fiddling around in her pocket until she produced her own pager. Grabbing her reading glasses from their chain around her neck and gazing through them at the pager, her eyebrows came together in confusion before traveling higher in surprise and, finally, relaxing.

Smiling, Jan turned back towards her and said, "I have some other appointments to meet, and then I will need to go home for a bit, but after that, I promise you, I will come back this evening in time for dinner. All right?"

Chell, feeling her heart thudding against her rib cage, wondering what the hell she had been thinking, tried to regain some semblance of control by pressing her lips together and giving a single nod in understanding.

The door closed and Chell sat there, her heart still racing, feeling overcome by a terrible feeling, like she had just made a mistake. It was difficult to shake and the feeling only got worse as the day went on. Her mind continually went back and forth between wondering what she was afraid of - was she even really afraid - of course she was afraid - why was she afraid? She knew the answers, of course she did, but she did not want to examine them any further than that. This was not something that was as easy to solve as a deadly testing chamber - this was something far more complex and raw and painful, and the more she thought about it, the worse it made her feel.

She felt herself beginning to work up into a panic attack, as she had come to recognize the feeling. This was something so far from the way she was, back when she was _there_ , that the mere thought of her experiencing something like it made it all the worse. Her head was beginning to spin and the room felt like it was shrinking around her, collapsing in on itself just as she was.

There was nothing wrong here. Everything was fine. There was no danger. Jan was going to come back. She was going to keep her promise. She was not going to abandon her, no matter how hard Chell tried to piss her off and push her away. Jan did not hate

 _(I_ despise _you! I_ loathe _you!)_

her. She was not going to go off the rails and

_(Punch! You! Into! This! Pit!)_

hurt either her or Winter.

Chell did not hate her either, not really, couldn't she see?

In an attempt to alleviate the consuming sensation, she held Winter tightly against her, focusing on his breathing, his little contented noises, and gently patting his back so as to help him work out the bubbles of air he had swallowed while feeding. She got up from her spot on the couch and paced around her apartment a few times, ignoring the pain in her middle until it gradually lifted away as the meds began to kick in.

Even after Winter fell asleep against her shoulder, Chell refused to let go of him. He was her whole world, her anchor, and right now she needed him more than anything else. She stroked his soft hair, breathing in his scent, and moved to sit in front of one of her long bookshelves, feeling restless. As she gazed upon the volumes, a sudden urge to take them all out and re-order them swept through her. Keeping her baby held in one arm, she carefully plucked out each of the books and stacked them in neat alphabetical towers across her entire living room floor. Then, she took them all, placed them back onto the shelves, stood back and looked. And then took them all out again. And re-organized them a second time.

Before she knew it, she had spent the better part of the afternoon organizing and re-organizing her books and she still did not feel satisfied. She moved to start all over again with the whole process when she heard a knock at her door. Immediately she got up and looked through the peephole, feeling a surge of emotions come roiling through her at the sight of Jan there on the other side. She undid the locks and let her in, trying her best to hide how she had been feeling only moments before. If she had failed at it, Jan was polite enough not to mention it.

As promised, Jan had brought over a heavy bag full of ingredients with which to make Chell's favorite meal. That same something inside of her from earlier loosened even more. Now that she was taking her medication and was therefore not suffering so much pain, she was able to watch as the older woman went about preparing their dinner, taking mental notes so that she could help herself in the future. Afterwards, Chell cradled little Winter against her shoulder, leaning her head warmly against him and listening to his small noises, and listened while Jan read to her from one of her books, until she felt so sleepy, Jan had to help get Winter settled before ushering her off to bed.

Jan's helpful presence did not end with that one unscheduled visit. Against Chell's better judgment, she found herself allowing the woman to come over more and more to help. They fell into a rhythm, where Jan stopped by on a near-daily basis to help clean and prepare meals for Chell, teaching her as she went, while Chell herself took some (admittedly) much-needed time to sleep and otherwise better take care of herself. Conversation between them was, for the most part, kept to a minimum, at least on Chell's end, but Jan seemed okay - comfortable, even - with that.

Things only got better from there, and for the first time in a year, Chell began to feel happy.


	4. Schrödinger's Cat

When Chell came home from her job at the library that afternoon, she carried with her several books that she had decided to check out. She kept them tucked safely into her shoulder bag, not wanting Jan to see them. The older woman had a curious way of being able to pick up on even the slightest of Chell's nuances, and despite the friendship that had developed between the two of them in the last few months, Chell still did not quite feel comfortable with that particular trait of hers. While sometimes it did seem to work to her advantage - such as the fact that Jan understood to keep most electronic devices out of her apartment and that she could not stand clothes or other objects with too much blue, orange, or white on them, hence why she had helped Chell paint her entire apartment a tannish-brown color - there were other times, other things, and other thoughts that Chell wanted to keep tucked away from her as much as possible.

With that in mind, Chell made sure to arrange her expression into its most natural state - blank, guarded, and otherwise unassuming - and let herself into her apartment. As was the new norm, Jan was there, working on the laundry, while Winter lay next to her on the floor, looking around in curiosity, at least as much as his small vantage allowed. The moment he spotted Chell, his expression lit up and he began kick his legs and make more noise in excitement. Chell greeted Jan with her customary small nod, dropped her bag into the nearest chair, and leaned down to scoop up her little son, smiling back at him even as a bolt of anguish thundered through her.

Her son was filling out beautifully, growing by leaps and bounds as the days passed, and along with that came the painful realization of how much he was beginning to resemble his father, even at this early age. Chell almost could not stand it. While Winter had her dark, not-quite-black hair, he had unfortunately (or fortunately - Chell had not been able to quite decide yet) had his father's bright, cobalt blue eyes. She found herself hoping against all odds that they would end up changing colors in the next few months, but she knew that this was not likely to happen with all that she had learned about genetics.

Perhaps what troubled her more than anything was that smile of his - so sunny and bright and full of life and laughter. His eyes twinkled and brightened all the more whenever he smiled, the way _his_ had. It was sweet and innocent and only for her - well, mostly, as Winter was beginning to smile more at Jan as well. It stabbed her with grief even as she adored it. It made her smile even as it tore her up inside.

She had to remember to remind herself that she was going to feel this kind of pain for a long time to come, possibly for the rest of her life, and if she at least tried to acknowledge it, tried to deal with it piecemeal, maybe one day she would be able to move past it. She would rather it just go away entirely and on its own, but she had not been able to fully convince herself of that as an eventuality yet. On any given day, everything was still there, right beneath the surface and ready to come out at moment's notice. Some days were harder than others to navigate the minefield, but with one cautious step at a time, she was was beginning to force herself through it, beginning to slowly call out all those things she had shoved back into the corners of her mind.

In the meantime, of course Winter knew nothing of her own plights (this was not his burden to carry, and even so, even further down the road, there was no way he could ever comprehend everything that had happened with his parents) and so she did what any other loving mother would have done - she returned his smile and brought him in to smother him with kisses. He was not quite at the age where he knew how to laugh yet, but all the same she could tell that he was delighted. His joy was so contagious and always made her feel better, despite the pain that coupled with it. She held him and allowed herself to feel content - as content as she was able to feel. In the end, it did not matter who his father was or how he had come to be - he was hers and she loved him more than anything.

As Jan was finishing with loading up the washer and dryer, she and Chell shared a short conversation in which Jan detailed all the things she and Winter had done together while she was at work - mostly consisting of Winter sleeping and having some tummy time down on the floor while Jan encouraged him as she kept up with chores. Chell, on the other hand, shrugged in response to most of the questions Jan asked. She never had much of anything of interest to say about her days at work, for the most part because her job was about as quiet and uneventful as jobs came. Part of her was bored, but another part of her was grateful for the calm, relaxed environment that was free of triggers. She kept mostly to herself while occasionally engaging with a couple of her coworkers, but for the most part they did not know sign language and so their conversations were usually short, professional, and to the point.

That suited Chell just fine - truth be told, she was far more interested in discovering what kinds of books awaited re-shelving. She wanted to learn it all - learn all about as much as she could, especially about events that had occurred during her confinement at Aperture Laboratories. There was a very large chunk of her life out there that was missing - memories and events that were flat out likely gone forever - and perhaps she felt that reading about the world would help fill in those gaps, in some form or another.

Humanity had apparently fallen and risen back up a number of times while she slumbered beneath the earth's surface. It had been quite fortunate both for herself and for Winter that she had escaped when she had - a couple hundred years sooner and she might never have met another living person and been left to wander the wilderness alone with a child, and that was not even including the fact that they both would have likely died in childbirth. It was strange for her to think that while she had been asleep for centuries in a dilapidated science facility far beneath the surface, up top everything had been through chaos and back again. She supposed it was really no different than what all had taken place in the facility, once you boiled away the specifics - mankind had sewn the seeds to its own destruction. Whether this price had truly been paid up remained to be seen.

Wondering about all of this, and therefore thinking about what all had taken place during her time at the facility, had led her to checking out the few books that were currently still sitting her bag across the room. One thought had led to another and there was simply no stopping it at that point. In retrospect, it might have been easier for her to have just tossed her curiosity into an Emergency Intelligence Incinerator, but she unfortunately did not have that option.

It was not until a while after Jan left for the evening and after getting Winter to sleep that Chell finally went about removing her checked-out books from her bag. To anyone else, they might not have appeared to be that fascinating - they were just a few books about the history of mankind's studies of and travels to space. While mankind had never quite made it other planets, at least not where colonization was concerned, there were a few other pieces of information that Chell was hoping to glean. She had tried to ignore her curiosity about it, but being around so many books on the subject made it impossible. She could not for the life of her pinpoint exactly why this was so important to her, but she just had to know-..

Exactly what would happen to a person who was stranded in space?

She knew the obvious answer - they would die. But what she wanted to know was... would it be painful for that person? How painful would it be? Exactly how long could they have survived and what would have happened to their body during that time? As Chell read on, she felt her pulse increase and her gorge rise. Feeling suddenly very sick, she put the books aside and put her head between her knees while she tried to steady her breath. Instead of helping, the room began to spin around her and so she ended up lying down flat on her couch with her legs propped up while she waited for the feeling to pass.

She should have known that this was a bad idea, but-...

 _He_ deserved the worst of the worst for what he had done to her. The cold, calculating, logical part of her - the part that had been solely responsible for seeing her through Aperture - told her this over and over again. He got what he deserved, he brought it on himself, there was absolutely no part of her that was to blame for what had happened to him.

But much deeper than that, in a part of her she wished that _she_ had cut out of her before releasing her onto the surface, she did not truly think he deserved to suffer. If anything, she had hoped that the end for him would have been swift, painless, merciful - even though he clearly would not have extended the same courtesy to her despite all his taunts to the contrary.

_(Painless. Well- it won't be painless, obviously.)_

Perhaps even worse than the fate the books had just described to her was that he might still be alive up there. He was not (had not been?) fully human. She had known that from the very beginning, when he had first awoken her from cryosleep and plugged himself into her Extended Relaxation Pod in order to maneuver it towards the testing tracks; and then later, when he disengaged himself from his rail; and after that, when the lights had been turned off on them and his eyes had served as funny little flashlights; and later still, much later still, when-...

The point was, he was part mechanical. Exactly which parts of him, Chell did not fully know, but he had been able to survive several encounters with neurotoxin and being crushed before her very eyes (one of the many horrific movies that still played in her mind's eye no matter how hard she tried to forget). Hell, he had presumably been alive for _centuries_. But could he have survived being thrown out into space? And if so, how long would he have been able to survive? And in either case, did it truly matter to her if he was alive or not? He was stranded, after all. There was no coming back for him, so he was as good as dead anyway. But if he was alive, was he suffering? Could she not have come up with a different way of bringing him down during that final fight, a way that would have ensured his end would have been quick and painless? He had been throwing bombs at her, after all, and she had been able to angle them back at him in order to disorient him enough to gain the upper hand. Could she have aimed one in such a way it would have killed him on impact?

Or, going along with a different line of thinking, could she have found a way of unplugging him? It had been _her_ idea to plug the corrupted cores into him (and, oh god, thinking about how that other excitable half-human, half-android man, the one obsessed with going to space, had been met with the same fate...),

_(Enough! I told you not to hang these cores on me, but you don't listen, do you?!)_

but had Chell really needed to listen to her? Given everything she knew about the murderous AI, even after everything they had been through together, for all Chell knew there really had been another way of getting through to _him_ , of bringing him down and dealing with him on a more reasonable level,

_(Where are you going? Don't run, don't run!)_

one that had not involved redirecting his own bombs back at him.

But no, of course there had not been any other way. Everything had been complete chaos. She had been focused solely on surviving the situation, as anyone would have been. And even with all of that, there _had_ been a way of unplugging him, and he had insured himself against that by rigging it up with explosives.

_(Part five! Boobytrap the stalemate button!)_

The one time he had actually outsmarted her and he had used it to try to murder her. And he had come close to succeeding - closer even than _she_ had.

_(What?! Are you still alive?! You are joking! You have got to be kidding me!)_

And after that-... After that... Could she not have tried harder to reach him, to grab onto him,

_(Grabmegrabmegrabmegrabmeeeeee...!)_

to pull him back in with her?

In the end, none of it made her feel even the slightest bit better. She knew that pondering _what ifs_ was a waste of time, energy, and emotion, and yet she could not stop turning the whole thing over in her head. It left her feeling sick and overcome by a strange combination of grief and remorse.

Why should she be feeling this way? He was the one who had tried to kill her, who had forced her into that situation to begin with. Everything had been a direct cause of his own rash actions, so why was it that Chell was left wondering what she could have done different? Was it the mere thought, the idea, that he could still be up there in space, suffering, both alive and dead? Or was it the helpless feeling that control was nothing more than an illusion, that she never had control over anything, not even herself? She had to admit that having control over herself - and refusing to give in - was something that she prided herself on.. or used to, anyway, with the knowledge that there were times when her unconscious mind had a mind of its own and sent her spiraling out of control altogether, leaving her on the floor, naked, wet, covered in soap, and needing to ask another person for help. Was she supposed to feel proud for surviving when it meant the death of someone else? Especially when that someone else had once been her friend, her lover, who was the father of her child. No, not especially - in spite of. All life was equal and important. Thinking otherwise was what _she_ would do.

She really did feel sick now. She got up, turned off all the lights, and climbed in to bed, looking over at her son as he slept peacefully in his cot next to her bed. She never wanted him to feel the way she was feeling at that moment and hopefully he never would. She would do her best to preserve that smile of his, even if it reminded her of the man whose fate she would never know.


	5. Development

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted this kinda late at night, so there may be typos - for that, I apologize. I will come back tomorrow/in the next few days and go through it again. x.x In the meantime, thank you again for reading, and I hope this chapter proves to be a little more entertaining. :)

Chell had been told that, developmentally, Winter may come up behind his peers. In the same breath she was assured not to worry, that premature babies sometimes took a little longer to develop, but that he would no doubt catch up. Besides, even full term babies all developed within their own time frame. The reassurance had, in turn, taken an opposite effect on Chell - she only worried all the more and began to scrutinize his development on a level she had not before.

But her scrutiny, of course, did not make any sort of difference.

When it did indeed take Winter several weeks longer than the average for him to perform certain physical milestones, Chell could not help but feel that she was somehow responsible for his delays, that somehow she was responsible for the fact that she had gone into early labor, that something she had done had caused all of it. Was it because she had not eaten enough? Or eaten the right foods? Had she taken a bath that was just a couple of degrees too hot? Was it somehow the way she sat down or slept? Had she been moving around too much when she should have been taking it easy? Was it from the nightmares, the flashbacks, or the anxiety?

Even worse, what if, on top of her own failures, this was a side-effect of what had happened in the facility? Was it the result of one of the gels that had gotten on her? What if it had absorbed into her skin, or she had incidentally ingested some of it, and it had affected her baby while he was just beginning to grow within her? Or what if some of the fumes from around the facility she had inhaled had done it? Or what if it was even something having to do with the fact that she had been in crysosleep for thousands of years? Surely, the fact that she had even been able to get pregnant at all had been a miracle (if one chose to see it as such); but could this be a side-effect of being in such long-term stasis? Was it the cell damage or cell death the doctors had told her (what felt like) so long ago, when they had first treated her? Or a side-effect of the emancipation grills, or stepping through the portals, or even the fact that he had been sired by a half-android man whose living components were presumably just as old as hers?

If it could ever be proven that _any_ of this had been caused by that god damn place, Chell swore up and down that she would march back there, find the body of that arrogant, heartless creep of a man whose name she had learned was Cave Johnson, find a way of reanimating his corpse, all so she could toss him into a pit of acid, or an incinerator, or hell, even tear him limb from limb with her own hands - she wouldn't be too picky. Chell was not necessarily prone to violence - she preferred to be left the hell alone - but for what all that could possibly be responsible for her son's struggles, she knew she could easily become the monster _She_ had been so keen on calling her. All it would take would be one nudge in the wrong direction and that would be it - the offender would never even know what hit them.

The only thing that made her feel even remotely better was seeing his joy whenever he was finally able to roll over, or crawl, or stand up, or walk. But with each new milestone he met, came both relief and renewed fears. What if the next milestone was never met? What if he fell so far behind his peers he would never be able to fit in with them? What if they cast him out, treated him as inferior or different, because of his.. well.. differences? He didn't deserve any of that. He deserved far better than anyone or anything in the world had to offer him, herself included, not that she had much to give other than the kind of love any mother has for her child, not that she really knew what else she _could_ give him.

On the other hand - cognitively, he seemed to be developing just fine, even though he was behind in his speech as well (something, Jan pointed out, that was most likely a result of the fact that he had a mute mother than anything else she was worrying about - and that he would learn from Jan herself and others, yet another shortfall that Chell blamed on herself). Winter had a quiet way of observing his surroundings, picking out and piecing together information that Chell had truthfully not given the eighteen month old enough credit for. While it was true that she never knew what to expect of her little son who had been born premature, the simpler truth was that she had not realized how observant, clever, and – quite frankly - sneaky toddlers could be. Winter had shown this in a number of ways – figuring out the toddler puzzles, sorting shapes and colors, and even mimicking some of the sign language he had seen his mother and adoptive grandmother using (he especially employed this knowledge when asking for more food or juice). But never was this more pronounced than when he began to figure out certain things that Chell could never have prepared herself for, not in a million years, and she had been alive for thousands.

On the afternoon of one of her days off, Chell decided a top-to-bottom deep cleaning on her entire apartment was in order. While Jan did help during the week with keeping the place clean, it never took long for it fall back into a state of disarray, not with a mischievous and energetic toddler on the scene. Winter kept getting into everything – absolutely _everything_ – so she decided to trap him in the second bedroom, where all of his toys were, with the child safety gate while she cleaned. She swung the gate shut behind her, lifted the latch, pulled it, then pressed it down until it clicked into place, lifting on it slightly to make sure it was secured, before she tried her best not to let her little son tug too hard on her heartstrings as he frowned at her while she walked away.

As she set to work with gathering up the stray clothes, books, and toys that littered the apartment, she cautiously allowed her mind to wander - _cautiously_ , because she knew herself well enough at this point to know that if it wandered off too far, she could end up throwing herself into an episode and not be able to do much else the rest of the day. She definitely wanted to complete this task for the day, so she kept her thoughts to the milder side of her memories, which were usually the more recent ones.

Sometimes, though, she was surprised to find that thinking about _Her_ did not actually cause her that much stress at all. It was a curious notion to her, but once she realized it was because she had come to respect the AI on some level (never mind the fact that she had been put back into stasis and had not had any chance to develop any sort of distress over it before she was being woken back up and once again forced into a situation in which she needed to focus solely on survival and not her thoughts and feelings in the moment), she understood and accepted it. The murderous AI had, obviously, tried to murder her, but the game of cat and mouse between the two of them had turned out to be sort of fun in the end - fun for Chell because she had gotten to throw her snarky adversary off Her high horse, whether or not She would have ever admitted it. And knowing that the AI had come to respect her in return - something She had never shown anyone else, Chell was sure of it - made her feel proud in some weird way. There was no way in heaven, hell, or anywhere in between or beyond that Chell would _ever_ go back to that place - unless, by some strange, improbable turn of events it was for her son - but she did wonder how She was doing, _what_ She was doing, and what She would think of what had become of her rebellious little test subject.

Chell snorted. Like She would really care. Chell could practically hear Her voice in her head,

_(What else do you think I could possibly be doing, you mute lunatic? And look at you, what a quaint little life you lead - boring job, putting on a good amount of weight, and, oh-.. of course, raising the bastard offspring of the dumbest moron who ever lived, who could forget that little tidbit?)_

Now _that_ was beginning to stray into dangerous territory. And at what point had the voice changed from _Hers_ to her own? Face burning at the mere thought of being chastised by her former adversary (let alone by herself), Chell hastily pulled away from that avenue and focused with added vigor on scrubbing at a few tough spots on the kitchen counter.

That was when she heard something fast approaching, rapid little stomps, immediately followed by something catching her round the legs. There was something to be said about her so-called "quaint little life" in that it had lulled her into a sense of tranquility while simultaneously making her prone to overreacting to certain stimuli - a notion that was confusing enough to herself, let alone trying to explain it to anyone else. The result being that, had she had the physical ability, she would have let out a yelp most unbecoming of Aperture's most fearless test subject. She backed up and reached out to steady herself against the counter, her chest heaving, ready to fight back, when she realized that her assailant was none other than the small child she had birthed from her own loins - figuratively speaking, of course, seeing as she had not actually _birthed_ him.

Once said small child had her undivided attention, he stretched out his arms to her, opening and closing his hands, asking to be picked up.

 _(Lady.._ _this might sound a bit ridiculous, but-.._ _will you hold me_ _?_ _I mean, just in case I were to DIE the moment I unplug from this thing_ _?_ _No? Hold my hand at least? I get it, it does seem a_ _bit_ _dubious_ _-_ _strange bloke, dark and foreboding science facility, dire situation, asking to hold your hand in case he dies while trying to help you_ _escape, but do you think you could.._ _All right, well, just stand right there, then - great, perfect, just like that - and catch me if I do happen to collapse and die, okay?)_

Once her heart stopped trying to jackhammer its way through her ribs, at least on a lower setting, she was able to form thoughts, starting with-..

How in the _hell_ had he gotten out?! She was positive she had heard the lock click into place. She had even jiggled it to be sure. It was possible that maybe she only _thought_ she had and that the lock had not fully latched. Occam's Razor dictated that this was the likeliest case, but still... she knew she had locked it.

Whisking the child into her arms, he tried to butter her up by smiling sweetly and laying his head down against her chest, but nonetheless she placed him back into his room and again shut the gate, this time double-checking to make sure it latched fully before walking away.

And again was shocked moments later to find her child toddling towards her and wanting to be picked up, letting out forlorn little whimpers this time. Disconcerted, she returned him for a third time to his room and this time crossed her arms and stood back, wanting to see with her own eyes what was happening. She swore to God, if this kid possessed some supernatural ability to fly or teleport or some shit, she was going to call it a day - perhaps for the rest of the week.

What she witnessed instead was much worse than any of those things. She watched in mixed fascination and disbelief as the sneaky little devil undid the latch and pushed the gate open himself, as if it were no big deal, and came back over to her, once again demanding snuggles.

How on earth had he figured out how to do that? Had he learned simply from watching her? Were kids really that intuitive? Was she supposed to be proud or horrified? Was this how _She_ had felt every time she had broken out of one of Her testing chambers?

What? No! What the hell was wrong with her?! Why would she even think something like that? These two situations weren't even remotely similar!

_(Au contraire, you destructive little psychopath.)_

Well, that was the end of all things after that. She tried to buy a better gate, but after discovering he did not have the strength to open the stronger lock, Winter instead proved that he could climb over it by piling up some of his books and toys and standing on them. The result was him hurting himself in the process and ending up needing to be calmed down for the next ten minutes,

_(Lady! Lady! I hurt myself! Ow...! Ow...! I really did hurt myself this time, it really hurts! I think I'm dying! Oh God, I'm dying! I don't want to die! I'm not ready for this! Oh, please help me..! Oh, oh wait, no, I'm good, we're good, everything's good, that was me, all me, shined my flashlights back into my own eyes somehow and went blind for a minute there and tripped down a couple of steps, but turns out I'm okay. Brilliant! Okay, let's move on.)_

but that was all for naught, because he did the same thing all over again only moments later. And when all of that failed after Chell took away his books and toys, he simply went with crying to get her attention.

_(Lady, why do you always have to be so quiet? I mean, I get it, the brain damage and you prefer jumping to speech, but still, couldn't you, I don't know, maybe try, instead of just giving me looks just like the one you're giving me now?)_

After that, her only other option was to let him roam free, which did not bode well for getting _anything_ done.

_(Don't worry, I'm absolutely guaranteeing you 100 percent that it's this way... Oh it's not this way.)_

This frustrated her to no end, even to the point where she seriously considered flat out tying him to a chair in order to keep him stationary. Jan laughed when Chell recounted all of this to her. When Chell looked offended and asked what exactly about this she found funny, Jan explained that what Chell was experiencing was completely normal and that she was neither the first nor would she be the last parent to have the same complaints.

" _But what if he gets hurt?"_ Chell signed.

Jan replied both with spoken words and signed, "I'm sure he will at some point. That's how we all learn, isn't it?"

" _That doesn't mean that I should let him go hurt himself."_

"True, but that also does not mean you should stop him from learning some lessons for himself. Besides, children have this curious way of disagreeing with what you tell them and insisting that they are right, and then discovering later why _you_ _were_ right."

_(Ah-ha, you see?)_

Chell shook her head - _Shut up!_

Jan must have misunderstood the gesture and thought it was Chell disagreeing with her (and why shouldn't she? She wasn't the one who was hearing voices in her head),

_(Oh, now you understand how I felt, having all those tumors hanging off of me.)_

because she smirked back at her, "Give it some time, you will see. In the meantime, try not to worry so much about Winter. He really is quite bright, you know - just like you, you just don't see it yet. Besides, even if he was of below average intelligence - and I'm not saying he is, dear - I think what matters more is a person's heart."

 _Don't even think about it_ , Chell hissed inwardly, effectively cutting off the voice. That was the last time she would ever entertain thinking about _Her_ again. Still, even as she gave Jan a blank look, not sure how she should take the comment, she swore she could hear laughter somewhere in the deep, dark chasm of her mind.


	6. Light and Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this took so long to get out! But I hope it does not disappoint. Thank you again for reading! :3

It was clear to Chell very early on that her son had a very big, very adventurous heart. Everything was fascinating to him. Every cat that walked by the window was his friend. Every person he passed on the street he smiled at, even while Chell avoided contact whenever possible. Every book was his favorite, and he had no shortage of those, Chell had seen to that.

Every day was so full of excitement for him, Chell often had a difficult time keeping up with him. She had an even more difficult time getting him settled down in the evenings. She was quite certain that there were times when she would fall asleep before he did, as he still slept in her bed and she would often lay down with him until he fell asleep. How that child was able to run around all day, for hours on end, and not collapse into bed at night was beyond her. All she knew was that on some nights, she was left with very little time to herself and even less time to sort through her thoughts.

She did try her best to keep the worst of her thoughts away from him, but there were plenty of times when she was simply unable to keep up with him. She felt tired a lot more than she wanted to admit, a lot more than Winter understood, but in the same token, she did not know what could be done about it. Winter displayed a lot of restlessness, always wanting to go out and play. But Chell kept him inside with herself most of the time, keeping their outside activities to a minimum, desite Jan's offers to either take him out or suggestions that the three of them go out together. Chell declined these offers. She still did not want to reveal such weakness to Jan, even after her help over the last six years.

She only felt at peace either when she was at home with Winter, or when Jan was with Winter at her apartment while she herself was at work. Outside meant anything could happen. Outside of her home meant less control. Outside meant more stimuli, more triggers, more opportunites for her to have a panic attack and need to hurry home before she got any worse and spend the rest of the day trying to get herself back on track, often resulting in her withdrawing from her son and leaving him confused. She did try her best to keep these kinds of things away from him, but on days when she had these kinds of attacks, she knew neither of them would sleep well later. This would be proven the next day, when she would wake up and find him curled up at the far end of the bed instead of right next to her.

Jan suggested that they try going on a nature walk, away from the stress of being around other people. Chell had to admit that she did feel intrigued by this idea - after all, she did prefer her house plants to other people. And she knew how much Winter would love it, getting to explore and run around for once, in a setting that was not likely to cause any odd behavior from his mother.

Perhaps going for a hike would do both of them some good. Jan was able to convince Chell further by suggesting that they take a firearm with them as protection. The community had strict rules regarding the issuance of firearms - even if they were to be used for hunting. Chell herself had been denied a permit on account of her history of mental affliction and ongoing treatment of such, but Jan was able to calm her fears of being away without protection by applying for the permit herself. With all that sorted out, all they had to do was plan their outing and then go for it.

Chell soon discovered that she loved going on hikes. No people, no expectations, no work to be done, just her, her friend, and her son out in the open air, surrounded by the sights, scents, and serenity of nature. Just _breathing_. It was the complete opposite of all the things in her life that had ever caused her stress. It was wild and free, things just moving along at their own pace, no reservations, no judgments. She felt like she was able to do the same when she was out here, like the trees were opening their arms to her, welcoming her as one of them, welcoming her home. And when the dappled sunlight shone down upon her through those trees, she felt it light up the dark corners of her mind, chasing away all the thoughts and voices that gathered there.

Their hikes seemed to be even better for Winter, who was beside himself with excitement and practically skipping circles around his mother and grandmother. He inspected every rock, plant, and critter they came across. He had a never-ending sense of curiosity and joy of the world around him that Chell was silently fond of. He wanted to get out and experience it all, which was the opposite of Chell herself, who wanted to keep to herself as much as possible. On this, it seemed, at least they could agree.

On their hikes, Chell would smile as she watched her son skip happily along the banks of the brook along which they were walking. He liked to search for unique stones and sticks, which he then used to poke at mounds of mud and stir up clouds of sediment along the bottom of the creek. He was always finding artefacts and critters and bringing them over to Chell and Jan, beaming as he did so.

"Look at this cool rock - it's a perfect circle!"

"Look at this big grasshopper - I think it threw up on me!"

"Look at this stick - it looks like that staff from those wizard books!"

"Look at this little snake - it has a black tongue and I think it likes me!"

That last one had just about given Chell a heart attack, until Jan took that opportunity to educate both of them on which snakes in their area were venomous and which were not. Thankfully, the one her son had just picked up was one of the more docile species and was completely harmless. All the same, Chell was a bit more cautious after that and warned Winter to not pick up any more snakes, even if he knew they were safe.

These hikes became a weekly occurence and somewhat of a ritual. Chell would spend the night before packing their bags with essentials and Winter would make their sandwiches. Jan would call upon them the following morning and lead the way and together the three of them would spend the day doing as they pleased, away from everything else.

Today was no different. As they followed along their usual path through the woods, Chell fell back into her typical silence and casually allowed her mind to wander. The voices were silent today. She smiled and wondered what thing her son would be bringing to her this time. Predictably, it did not take long for that question to be answered.

"Mama, Grandma, look - I found a frog!"

Chell watched as her young son - happy and energetic, his eyes gleaming with excitement - bounded over and presented both her and Jan with a squirming, bloated, brownish amphibian. The poor thing's eyes bulged as barely fit in her son's small hands, even with both of them cupped together, but Winter maintained a firm grip on it nonetheless. Clearly, he was proud of his find.

Chell gave a small smile while Jan responded by speaking and signing at the same time, "Oh, what a wonderful specimen it is! Let's have a look at it. Where did you find it?"

"It was sitting under a bush. It tried to get away, but I caught it! It peed on me, though," Winter explained as he held it out to both of his elders, so they could have a better look. Chell thought the thing was rather ugly and unimpressive, but nonetheless she offered him a tentative smile when he looked at her exectantly - at least until she noticed that his arms were covered in scratches.

Sitting under a bush... More like he had chased the thing through a patch of brambles. She gestured to the cuts on his forearms, some of which were welling with blood, though none were very deep.

"What? It's just a little scratch, it doesn't even hur- OWWWW!" he suddenly cried when Chell dabbed at one of the deeper ones with an antibacterial ointment.

Chell raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well it hurts _now_!"

She shrugged - half amused, half in mom mode - and moved to clean up the worst of his cuts, while he and Jan went on talking about the ugly creature he had found.

"Oh, you know," said Jan, her tone gentle, "Upon closer inspection, I do believe this one is actually a toad."

"A toad?" echoed Winter, wincing while his mother continued to clean him up.

"Yes. Can you tell us why?"

Winter blinked, thinking, running his fingers over the creature, inspecting it closely. He then said, "Because... its skin is dry. And bumpy."

"That's right!" said Jan with a smile. "Very good, very observant."

Chell chimed in by signing, _"Good job."_ Even after five years of being a mother, she was still having a hard time with knowing how and when to encourage and compliment her son. Clearly it was not her forte, so most of the time, she allowed Jan to do the encouraging while she backed her up. It seemed to please Winter in any case.

"Can I keep it?" he said, grinning broadly.

Both her son and Jan looked to her for the answer. Chell shook her head.

"Please? I promise I'll take care of it. I know what to feed it, and- and I'll give it lots of water, and-..." he asked again, and Chell had to admit that she did have a difficult time resisting him when he looked at her the way he was looking at her now, his blue eyes pleading, reminding her of the boy's father before she quickly banished the thought.

Now, Chell knew her son was observant and sharp, was kind and gentle with a heart the size of the entire planet, but there were times where he did seem a bit absent-minded. She knew that if she allowed him to bring it home, there was a high probability the thing would be loose in their apartment within the next 24 hours and would remain lost until it turned up dead under the sofa. The same had happened to an injured juvenile mouse he had brought home from their last hiking trip. Chell had been very much against having it in their apartment, but after he had expressed great concern over it being eaten by a predator or starving to death, she had allowed it. Within that same day, it had escaped its little box, as Winter had neglected to close the lid all the way. When Chell had found it a two days later, dead, she had not had the heart to tell him. It would have devastated him. She had taken it out, tossed it into the meadow across the way, and told him she had never found it.

Here, now, she had enforce her decision. She did not want a repeat of the incident with the mouse. Besides, she knew what it was like to be forced to live inside a box and the toad was not injured. She signed, _"No,"_ and shook her head for added emphasis.

"But- I'll make a better box. Please?"

She signed, _"It belongs out here, not in a box. Now go put it back where you found it. And wash your hands off in the water."_

Winter frowned at her, looking both hurt and angry at the same time, but nonetheless complied. Chell watched as he picked his way around the wet stones, kicking a few of them in disappointment, and gently placed the creature back under the bush where he had found it. The rest of their hike was done mostly in silence - contemptible in Winter's case, contemplative in Jan's, and concern in Chell's. She had not meant to upset him so, but she did not know how to communicate this to her son. Besides, he was not likely to listen to her at that moment anyway.

The following week was like some drama out of a young adult novel, even though her son had not even started grade school yet. Winter appeared to be a bit downtrodden, which Chell found to be unusual, but then again they were not on very good speaking terms as he was still upset with her about the toad. Jan assured Chell that this was typical childhood behavior, especially when said child did not get their way. Chell tried not to be hurt by it, tried to remind herself that although he was her whole world and universe, he was still a child and, by virtue of being a child, had a lot of learning and maturing to do. She gave him his space and carried on as normally as she was able.

The next hike they took, everything seemed to be going along even more quietly than before. Chell was not sure how to feel about it. It was strange not hearing her son's constant exclamations at things he had found. True, she did prefer the peace and quiet, but at the same time, she was used to having the noise of a child around, at least to a degree. She was disconcerted over the fact that Winter was still being so withdrawn, a concern which she expressed to Jan as they continued their walk.

 _"What do I do? He is still upset with me,"_ she signed.

"It just has to run its course, dear. He loves you so much, I hope you realize. He does so many of these things because he is seeking your attention."

_"What do you mean? I am his mother. I am constantly giving him attention."_

"I know that, and you are a wonderful mother to him, especially given all that you have been through," said Jan, although there was the underlying subtext of the fact that neither Jan or nor anyone else truly knew what all she had been through, "He has a hard time understanding you sometimes, I think, just as you have a hard time understanding him for the same reasons. He wants your approval, your love, your understanding - all the same things you want from him."

_"So because I did not allow him to bring home a toad, he thinks that I do not approve of him or love him?"_

"I'm sure that's not it at all. But he is processing it in his own way. Children have a hard time being told no. Shoot, some adults do, too," Jan said with a light chuckle. Chell did not feel comforted by it, nor did she return the sentiment.

Chell was quiet again after that, chewing over what they had just talked about. In fact, things were a bit _too_ quiet, she realized suddenly. Her breath caught in her chest as she looked around, eyes darting here and there, and immediately began to panic when she did not spot her son. She should have at least been able to hear him kicking rocks or romping through the underbrush, but now she heard nothing - that was, until she heard a rustling noise and a voice coming from the trees. She looked up on instinct.

"Mom! Hey, I'm up here, look!

_(Hey, hey! Up here!)_

I found-

_(-some bird eggs up here. Just dropped 'em into the door mechanism!)_

a bird nest! It looks so cool! Come up and see!"

Chell simultaneously felt her heart leap into her throat and something else sink straight down into her stomach, landing with such force she physically felt it pulling her downwards. She was dimly aware of Jan shouting at her, taking hold of her arms, softening her landing on the hard ground beneath her. She was breathing hard, so hard, her lungs twisted up, all the breath wrung out of her. She felt the world spinning around her, saw the greens of trees, the whitewashed sky, and all the earthy tones around her swirling into a blinding mix of color. Everything was too bright, too loud, too _everything_.

She could hear his voice - _his voice_ \- as clear as day. How? How was she hearing _his_ voice? How was he here? How was she hearing _his voice_ come out of her son like that?

Where was she? What was going on? There was too much white, too much blue. Too much. _Too much._ Jan was still yelling at her, trying to get her attention, and Chell, confused, senses on high alert, shoved hard at her, catching the older woman by complete surprise as she let out a gasp and fell sideways onto the ground.

Nearby, Chell heard a series of snapping and scraping sounds, sounds like-..

 _(metal on metal, over and over, the lift, shifting, giving way, falling away beneath her, opening up into nothing,_ nothing _...)_

someone picking their way down from a tree. They landed with a

_(loud crash, metal twisting, grinding, stabbing)_

soft thump, cushioned by a pillow of leaves. Rustling as they-

_(Moved in fast, fast, too fast, she barely had time to register that this was it, he was about to kill her, he was about to kill her, he was about to-)_

ran towards her, kneeling by her side.

"Mom, what happened? Mom! Are you okay? Mom!"

He reached out to touch her and without thinking, acting purely on instinct, she bared her teeth at him in a snarl, pulling away while shoving at him, ready to run, ready to fight.

The feeling began to abate when she heard sharp sobs. The face that came into focus - the blue eyes - were full of tears and terror, not hatred. She reached out to him, her son, trembling, desperate to apologize to him, to make sure he was okay, but this time he was the one to withdraw. His breaths were coming fast, as fast as hers. She could hear the air whining at the back of his throat as he scrambled away from her and to the other side of Jan, who was still lying on the ground in shock.

 _"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,"_ she signed, over and over.

But by that point, it was already too late. By that point, her son was already crying, afraid - afraid of _her_. By that point, the damage had already been done.

She moved to get up - to help up both Jan and Winter - sorry, so so sorry - and felt her heart sear with pain at seeing the way her son was cowering away from her, his eyes wide with fear, not understanding, hiding behind his grandmother for protection. Protection from _her_ , his own mother. She did this. _She did this_. How could she fix this?

Their trip was cut short after that. The three of them headed home, all the fun bled out, Winter clinging onto Jan, still shaking, still crying, all the way home. Jan did not even give Chell the option of being alone that night. Feeling numb, she allowed Jan to give her some sedatives, allowed her to lead her into her room and help her into bed. As she started to drift off, she thought she heard her son crying again. Someone had hurt him, but she couldn't move. What could she do if someone was hurting her son and she was being pulled under by something unseen, a dark force, and she had no ability to fight it?

She did not know. But that was the last time they ever went hiking, and later that night, for the first time, Winter slept in his own room.


	7. Broken

For all of the following day, Chell did her best to avoid Jan, but the woman never left her alone for long. She insisted on coming home early from work and on staying late, which annoyed the hell out of Chell. She did not need to be babysat, like she could not take care of either herself or her son. The incident from the day before had been unfortunate, yes - Chell was still ripped apart, seared, on the inside from it - but that did not mean she was an invalid. It did not mean that she needed someone to watch her, as if it was going to happen again. It was _never_ going to happen again, Chell swore this to herself.

In the meantime, her son was giving her a wide berth, keeping mostly to himself in his room, only coming out for mealtimes and other necessities, before slinking back off to his room. Chell tried her best to make up to him for what had happened, but he was still behaving in a far more taciturn manner than his usual self. She wasn't stupid enough to ask him what was wrong, but at the same time, she didn't know what she could say to him to make any of it better, to make him understand. He could never understand - was _too young_ to understand - and Chell could never explain, so she did what she could to show him that she was sorry and that everything would be okay.

At one point, she brought him his favorite snack - a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cut into triangles with the crusts removed - and offered to sit with him and play. But all he did was quietly thank her for the sandwich, set it aside, and go back to reading his favorite wizard books. Later, while he was in the bathroom, she snuck a peek into his room and saw that the sandwich had not so much as been touched. She felt her insides constrict and tear apart even more. He was clearly still distressed from the day before, but what could she do? There was no way to undo what had been done - God, she knew that, because if there was a way things could be undone, she was pretty sure a lot of things in her life would be different, things she didn't want to think about and things she felt like shit for even acknowledging. Either way, her heart was breaking, and up until that point she hadn't even known it was possible for it to break any further.

Later that evening, at bedtime, Chell went to help get Winter tucked in for bed, when he suddenly insisted that Jan do it instead. He didn't want any of his stories read to him, didn't want any hugs or kisses, didn't want anything except for Jan to stay with him until he fell asleep. Chell admittedly felt a little hurt by this, but she also knew. There wasn't anything for her to say, think, or feel about it other than she simply _knew_.

She waited as patiently as she could while the other woman sat with her son. One room and a hallway away, and yet it felt like miles. She felt closer to Aperture in that moment than she did to her own son, a thought which jolted through her and made her scowl at herself in disgust. How could she even _think_ such a thing?

_(You think that because you have always known that civilian life was never going to suit you. Motherhood was never going to suit you. And now you've broken your child. You've broken him like you broke me. And you know you've done it. Congratulations. Does he at least get cake, you brain-damaged lunatic?)_

Chell felt her chest clench even more as the words floated across her mind, drifting away for a moment before roaring back in bright neon red. She tried to shake her head against it, tried to fight back the warmth she felt pooling under her eyelids, but the thought kept coming back, pelting her from the inside like thousands of hailstones, ice cold and relentless.

_(You've broken him.)_

_No. No, he's not broken. He'll be fine. We both will be. I can fix this. It won't happen again._

_(Well, you say that, but we both know you are much better at breaking things than you are at fixing them. You and the idiot had that in common.)_

_(Well done. Good. Aren't you Little Miss Clever. Little Miss Smashy-Smash.)_

_(You're always letting everyone down. Me-..)_

_(You didn't hold me when I unplugged myself from my management system, even after I told you that it could kill me!)_

_(...-Even the idiot - I'll grant him that much, but only because it serves to further prove my point. And now you can add the idiot's bastard offspring to the list. He's going to grow to hate you, you know.)_

It was taking Jan an awful long time for her to get Winter to sleep. She could hear their muted conversation from the other room, but it was quiet enough that she could not make out the words, especially being in contention with the voices in her head. All the same, she didn't have to hear exactly what they were saying for her to _know_. A large part of her tried to deny it, tried to pass it off as paranoia, but she _knew_ as much as she knew what _they_ were saying to her.

 _(Am I being too vague? I_ despise _you. I_ loathe _you. You arrogant, smugly quiet, awful jumpsuited_ MONSTER _of a woman!)_

 _(Really, now, that's a bit harsh. I never thought that jumpsuit looked bad on you - it was the fashionista scientist that did. You should stop listening to_ him _and listen to_ me _instead. Listening to him is what got you into this mess to begin with.)_

_You tried to MURDER ME TOO, so both of you, SHUT UP!_

_(Rude. But, oh well, have it your way. Don't listen to me. Mother always knows best, isn't that right?)_

Whether or not she always knew best was debatable, but she'd be damned if she let anyone else tell her what to do - with herself, or with her son. She would make it work for them. She would just have to try harder - to overcome everything, to protect her son, to see them both through this. Maybe she was good at breaking things... but she was also good at solving puzzles.

She waited for the voices to say more, to criticize and debate, but they were silent. Everything was numb again. Strangely, this did not make her feel any better or any more reassured.

Jan emerged from the room after about an hour and a half of sitting with Winter. Chell tried her best to pretend that she had been busy reading a book, but she put her book down just a bit too quickly to be convincing. Instead of drawing more attention to it, she calmly signed, _"Is he asleep?"_

"Yes," said Jan with a sigh, coming over and sitting on the other chair in the living room, "It took him a while, though."

Chell pressed her lips together but otherwise left her expression carefully blank. Winter taking a while to fall asleep was nothing new, but at the same time, once again, Chell _knew_. She didn't want to, didn't want to acknowledge it at all, but all the same, she still _knew_. And the fact that Jan did not elaborate more than that was very telling as well.

"Chell-.." Jan started, but Chell was already rising from her seat and moving away from her. "..-Can we sit down and talk?"

She poked her head into her son's room, watching momentarily as he breathed, seemingly perfectly normal and peaceful once again, before turning away and stepping into her own adjacent room. Jan was coming after her, but Chell ignored her and closed the door softly behind herself. There was no way she could handle Jan in this state. Not with suffering so many blows in such a short amount of time. She would need at least one night to fortify herself against whatever Jan was going to discuss with her later - and it would happen, Chell knew, because if there was one thing she had come to learn about Jan, it was that she was quite persistent when it came to her well-being. She was as touched by it as she was annoyed. In either case, she was not equipped to deal with it right now.

She listened to the silence for a period of time, waiting for Jan to leave. After a while, she heard her front door open and close and Chell let out a breath of relief. Maybe she would be able to get some sleep tonight, though she doubted it. There was too much traffic going on inside her head. Still, she propped her door back open and lay down to see what sleep she might be able to catch.

Surprisingly, she did drift off for a little while, only to be awakened shortly thereafter by the sound of her son sobbing in her doorway.

"Mommy-..."

Chell was out of her bed in an instant, flipping the lights on and coming over to him.

 _"What's going on? Are you okay?"_ she asked.

He seemed to be fidgeting more than usual, and very upset. His eyes were tinged red and rimmed with fatigue - and filled with tears. She instinctively moved to embrace him and felt herself go numb all over again when he flinched away from her. It was only for a moment, just a small reaction made on instinct, but it was enough to deepen the ache within her. She had caused that. She had instilled _real fear_ inside of him, where it had not been before.

_(You've broken him...)_

But then the moment passed and he accepted her comfort, leaning his head against her shoulder. Chell sighed. She imagined, for a moment, that this whole thing - the whole last couple days - had just been a nightmare. She and Winter would both wake from it soon. And Winter would be a baby again, leaning his head against her shoulder while he drifted off into a milk-induced sleep.

The image burst when she felt him nod against her, felt the tears soaking through her shirt.

She pulled away from him so that she could look at him again, _"Did you have a bad dream?"_

He rubbed at his eyes, nodded, and muttered, "I had an accident.."

She started to sign, _"What do you mean?"_ , thinking he was telling her about his dream, but stopped halfway through when a sour sort of smell hit her. And then she noticed that his pajamas were soaked. She stared at him in shock when it all at came together. Winter had not wet himself since he had been toilet trained, but now-... What had happened-...?

_(You've broken him...)_

"I'm sorry," he whimpered, his voice shaking and watery, "I'm, I'm sorry, it was an accident. Please don't be mad."

 _"I'm not mad. It's okay. Accidents happen. Let's get cleaned up,"_ she replied, and led him into the bathroom where she made up a warm bath for him to sit in while she stripped the sheets off his bed and tossed them into the washer to be dealt with in the morning.

She stared at the large, damp oval patch on his bed, feeling the broken pieces inside of her form into a bunch of tiny needles and sink down, piercing her from the inside out. She no more knew how to clean urine off a bed mattress than she knew how to fix the situation. Tomorrow she would ask Jan about the mattress, but the rest-... she would have to figure out on her own.

_(You've broken him...)_

She was in the middle of flipping the mattress over, so that he would have a dry surface to sleep on, when she heard him call to her, "Mommy?"

 _"What is it?"_ she signed upon reappearing in the doorway.

"Are you-... are you mad at me?" he asked quietly, refusing to meet her gaze, instead swirling around some of the bubbles that had not melted away yet. Repeating his question from earlier meant that he was not convinced. Chell steeled herself, determined to fix it all, despite everyone's (Jan's, _Her_ , even her own) doubt in her ability to do so.

 _"No. Never,"_ signed Chell, coming over and sitting on the edge of the tub, _"Why would you think that?"_

"Grandma said that you were scared. She said you were scared and that's why you got angry. And-.. I'm so sorry I scared you, Mommy. I-.. I didn't mean to. I promise I won't climb any more trees."

Chell felt her jaw fall open of its own accord. Her son was blaming _himself_ for all of this? How on Earth could he even think this was even remotely his fault?

_(You've broken him...)_

And Jan had spoken to him about what happened? Of course she had. Chell should have known. She _did_ know, despite trying to deny it. She felt the ache in her stomach ignite into fury, but she had to force it aside. She had to remain calm, because her son was right there and she had already

_(broken him)_

upset him enough. She would have to deal with it later.

 _"I am sorry for what happened, for how I acted. It was not because you climbed the tree. It was not your fault,"_ she signed with a sigh, _"Everything is okay. I promise you it will never happen again."_

Questions danced behind those young eyes, but he nodded and remained quiet. Her son was normally so inquisitive, but perhaps he sensed this was something not to be talked about. Either way, Chell knew so much more was going on inside his head and that he was choosing to keep it to himself.

 _"Look at me,"_ she signed, and then placed her hand under his chin and lifted so their eyes met, _"You are the last person I could ever be angry with. I love you more than anything else in this world. Do you understand?"_

"Okay," he said softly, "I love you too, Mommy. Can I sleep in your bed with you?"

Chell smiled, feeling a bit of relief flow through her, _"Yes."_

After they both got settled back into bed, and after Winter fell back asleep, Chell felt anger burning through her veins. Jan had _no right_ to be talking to her son about any of this, especially without her permission. A part of her acknowledged that Jan was only trying to help - it was in her intrusive, overbearing manner, after all - but god damn it, she should have consulted her first. Chell had fought tooth and nail, suffered through living, walking, breathing nightmares to keep it from him, and she was going to brazenly lay it all out in the open like that? And while not knowing what had _really_ happened to her? Neither Jan nor anyone else had any way of knowing, it was not their _fucking business_ to know, and that's just the way Chell wanted to keep it.

Jan, however, had other things in mind, because when she made her appearance the next day, she sent Winter into the other room, sat down with Chell, and said, "Chell-.. I know you don't want to hear this, but.. I think it's time we sit Winter down and explain to him what is happening."


	8. Blind Spots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All, just a head's up, this chapter is pretty dark and has some moments that might be hard for some to digest. I don't usually like spoiling things, but I thought it would be appropriate to give a head's up this time. I do not plan on this story containing any child abuse, although there will be depictions of the difficulties of being a parent with a mental illness. I want to promise to you a happy ending of sorts - there is just a lot of stuff to wade through on the way there. Again: No physical abuse, no sexual abuse, but there will be some psychological trauma. 
> 
> Also, as a friendly note - I have had a few people ask if Wheatley will be coming back at any point in the story. I don't want to spoil anything publicly for anyone who doesn't want any spoilers,, but if you would like to know, please feel free to message me! I will be happy to answer any questions.
> 
> Lastly, I posted this pretty late at night, so I may need to come back and do some editing. Anyway, please enjoy!

Jan's statement left no room for doubt as to what she wanted to talk about. Chell was equal parts anxious to get it over with and anxious to even be in this position to begin with. Also, she hated when she spoke to her like this, like she was some fragile thing that she needed to tiptoe around. Like she was a child, incapable of handling things on her own.

Either way, she knew Jan would not let her off the hook. It was times like these when Chell resented her for her own brand of stubbornness, one that refused to leave her alone, refused to let her hide until she was able to deal with things on her own. Jan had given her enough space before, but Chell sensed that that space was rapidly closing and it was putting her even more on edge.

"Chell, I-..." she started, and then faltered, something Chell had never heard her do before. Jan was usually so certain, so calm, so composed. The fact that she seemed nervous too disconcerted her even more. "..-I care about you and Winter very much. I hope you know that. You two have very much become my family. Winter is a pure joy to be around and you I think of as my own daughter."

Chell immediately felt uncomfortable and turned so that she was not looking right at Jan. She didn't want to see Jan's face and she didn't want Jan looking at hers either.

"The very last thing that I want to do is upset either you or Winter. But I think, all things considered, we need to explain to Winter what is going on."

 _"Explain what is going on with what?"_ Chell signed back, deciding to feign ignorance. She knew what Jan was getting at - and she knew Jan knew that she knew - but she wanted to give her a chance to drop it. To back off while she still had the chance.

"With you."

Frustrated that Jan had not taken the hint and the conversation with her son from the night before still playing fresh on her emotions, she signed, " _Why do you need me to explain anything to him? I thought you did that already,"_ all doing her best to convey both her sarcasm and bitterness of that fact by lifting an eyebrow at her.

"I didn't give him any details. Those are not mine to give," Jan replied without rising to meet her bitter tone, something which inwardly made Chell feel more annoyed, "Only you can open up to him in such a way. All the same, Winter thinks this is his fault, which is why you need to explain to him that it isn't."

 _"..-Right, because_ you _put that idea in his head."_

"No, he was frightened and you were incapacitated. He needed someone with a level head to explain to him that your dissociation and subsequent anger was a reaction to fear. The conclusion that he was at fault was one he drew on his own."

_"And so you sat there and let him believe that?"_

"Not at all. I absolutely explained that none of this was, or is, his fault. But he needs you to tell him that."

" _I did. Last night. He came to me in the middle of the night, crying. And he wet the bed. He's never done that before. What a coincidence."_

Jan looked crestfallen for a moment, her eyes reflecting a shimmering grief, in the way that deep water reflects moonlight. She then said, "I am sorry to hear that. I hope he is better this morning. I can help you clean the mattress later." She paused, seeming to allow Chell a chance to speak, and when she did not take it, she continued, "It's not a coincidence that he is going through this now. He experienced something traumatic, as did you. He will get better, and so will you, but you have to be able to speak to each other about it."

 _"I_ can't _speak, in case you didn't notice."_

"I have noticed. I have also noticed that you are diverting," she said calmly. Chell held back a sneer. "You need to sit down and talk to him. Tell him about your PTSD, tell him about _you_."

Chell felt something very raw, very sore, like an exposed nerve, send sparks of pain and anger through her. There was so much she wanted to say, but all she could say was, " _He is a child."_

"I think you are underestimating him. Winter is so young... but he is also remarkably bright and kind and has a caring spirit like none I have ever seen before, especially for someone his age. I think you would be surprised by how much he is capable of understanding if you gave him the chance."

_"Don't talk to me like I don't know my own child. You don't even have any children, so what would you know?"_

"I'm not saying you don't know your own child," said Jan softly, looking every bit as old as her numerical age and then some in that moment.

Again, her eyes held a heavy, impossibly deep look of sadness in them and for perhaps the first time since she had met the woman, Chell _really_ stopped to think about how Jan was an actual _human_ , someone with _real feelings_ , not simulated or programmed or truncated or bastardized to a degree where only the vast extremes were expressed and in excess, like all the artificial beings she had encountered at Aperture, even ones that seemed more human, ones like-...

"I'm saying we all have blind spots - even me; even you - and sometimes we don't see how much we are hurting someone else."

_"I haven't hurt anyone, not on purpose. Like I said, Winter and I talked last night. He knows it was an accident and that it will never happen again - as should you."_

"I'm sorry, but I don't know that. And you don't know that either."

_"Look, I realize I made a mistake in taking my eye off him. I should-.."_

"Chell-..."

_"..-never have let him go so far. Going to the woods was a mistake-.."_

"..-Listen to me-..."

_"..-And I don't want to talk about this anymore, so just-.."_

"You tried to grab the gun."

Chell felt her face react in a manner that was most unbecoming of her. Her jaw fell open for a moment and her eyes fluttered, feeling a wave of disbelief and nausea spread through her, turning her cold from the inside out. She found herself shuddering to a complete stop at what Jan had just said to her.

Jan had to be lying. There was no way she could have-... She _never_ would have-... She had no memory of it,

_(We all have blind spots...)_

_(I would blame it on the brain damage, but, well, we all know that-..)_

_(...Pure recognition flashing through his eyes, everything they had shared together, and the realization of what he had done...)_

_(...-you've broken him.)_

_(All you ever cared about was escaping - didn't care about leaving me behind, did you?)_

so Jan _had to be lying_.

 _(But you know that she is not, just like I would never lie to you. You tried to murder your own child. Even I wouldn't have stooped_ that _low.)_

She signed a single word - _"No..."_ \- and shook her head, not even sure exactly who or what she was responding to anymore, feeling disconnected from herself, like she was watching events unfold from outside of her own body. She twisted her hands together, searching for something with which to ground herself, but it felt like

_(falling into a pit)_

falling into a pit,

_(grasping at air)_

grasping at air,

_(nothing to grab onto)_

nothing to grab onto,

_(nothing to break her fall)_

nothing to break her fall.

"You did. My God... if you had actually-.." Jan's voice, high and airy, pulled Chell back

_(through the portal, but it was still open, still pulling, the vortex tearing apart the entire room)_

_(Grabmegrabmegrabmegrabmeeee!)_

her hand going to her chest as if to feel her own heartbeat, the way Chell was feeling hers now, only she was feeling it inside her own head, behind her eyes, "Whatever happened to you, whatever you went through, whatever was-.. _done_ to you-.."

Chell's eyes flashed at the older woman. She was treading on very thin ice, everything was crashing together, and Chell could feel it all circling around her, winding her up from the inside, pulling her from the outside, threatening to shake her loose one thread at a time.

"..-you have to face it. You can't keep running from it. Or things like this will continue to happen."

Chell shook her head at her vehemently, outright denying it before she could stop herself. None of this was real. She was dissociating again, just like when she was in labor and she thought the doctors operating on her were all _Her_ , only instead of stitching her up, She was cutting her back open again, pulling out her insides and inspecting them; just like when she had fallen in the shower and she had seen _him_ again, towering over her, smirk on his face, coming in for the kill; and just like the other day, when her son's voice had suddenly become _his_.

"Winter needs you to be his mother, to protect him, support him, not-.. He needs you here, now, but you can't give him what he needs when you continually live the past. You can't give _yourself_ what _you_ need when you continually live in the past."

At this point, Chell could feel a solid warmth growing behind her eyelids, threatening to be pushed out by her thundering heart. She pressed her lips together and blinked against it, willing the feeling to go away, but it did not. It only continued to build within her, to the point where she could feel herself heating up, melting away the coldness that had grown within her, feeling the energy vibrating every molecule of air around her.

"The only way you and him can get through this is together. And I'm with you, too. You aren't alone. We'll get through this together.

_(We'll get out of here. Together. You and me.)_

And that's exactly what you have to do, dear - you have to _go through_ it. Go through it, but let us walk through it with you. I know you don't want to admit that anything is wrong. Believe me, I understand that. You are so strong, so-.. stubborn. You don't like asking for help, because you have been let down by others in the past, painfully so."

 _"You don't know anything,"_ Chell signed defensively, some part of her screaming at her, begging her to stop before it was too late. But she still had control. She still _had_ to have control. Without control, what was she? What _was_ she, if not a creature that reacted purely on impulses anymore?

_(In what way are you any better than the moron? Or any better than me?)_

_(All I wanted to do was make everything better for me! And here you come, thinking that you are better than me!)_

"Then tell me what happened to you."

_(You aren't better.)_

_"I don't remember."_

"You do."

_(You aren't.)_

_"I don't."_

"What happened involving trees or being high up? Your reaction the other day was quite strong, so it suggests-.."

Chell cut her off by scoffing and shaking her head. Like she knew _anything_.

But Jan wasn't going to give up. She wasn't going to leave her alone.

"No? Well, how about this. Based off the condition you were found in and your reaction to certain stimuli, I believe you were experimented on."

Chell stopped dead and glared at the woman. How...?

_(Tch, she's way off. Testing and experimenting are two completely different things.)_

"You have an intense dislike of the colors white, orange, and blue - easy to figure out why white and orange, it's the color of the inside of a hospital or laboratory setting, and the jumpsuit you were found in was orange. But why blue?"

_(Are you really so mundane that you are allergic to colors? And so obvious that this dumb old lady has you all figured out?)_

"You also refuse to own any electronics. It suggests electronic or mechanical devices were used against you somehow."

Chell was openly staring at the woman now.

 _(I was never against you. I was always trying to_ help _you.)_

"At some point, for some reason, likely unknown even to you, you were placed in some form of stasis for an extended period of time, which caused damage to both your brain and vocal chords."

_(The real kicker is, how much of your brain was damaged before you were put under?)_

Chell shook her head again.

"Regarding your wounds when you were found, they were still quite fresh," Jan continued, and Chell wondered why, _why_ was she doing this? Why was she tearing her open like this, opening back up the "quite fresh" wounds she had been found with?

_(Are you really going to sit there and let her pick you apart like this? What a vulture.)_

"But also they were stitched up with perfect precision. They tore you apart and then they healed you."

 _(Blown apart. You were_ blown _apart. If you are going to let her pick you apart, at least make sure she gets it right.)_

Chell got up and began pacing, trying to dispel the energy that was steadily mounting within her. " _Shut up,"_ she signed.

But Jan did not.

"Aside from your wounds, you were in excellent physical shape - so you were kept quite active. You are a very logical person, and everything you do is methodical, controlled. You must have been an asset to them, but they let you go. Why?"

_(Because I wanted to let you see how "free" you could be without me, plain and simple.)_

" _I said SHUT UP!"_

_(I. AM NOT. A MORON!)_

"And then there's the issue of your pregnancy. You have denied that you were sexually assaulted, and yet your pregnancy clearly was not intentional. What of Winter's father, then? Did you have any kind of relationship with him? Did something happen to him? Or were you forcibly impregnated against your will when they experimented on you? You have an intense fear of other people and relationships in general, so I think-..."

Chell could feel that her entire face was a sneer at this point. This was it. The other shoe had finally dropped. This was the moment when Jan betrayed her, just as she knew she would. She should never have allowed herself to get too comfortable. First she makes her son believe he is responsible for what happened, and now this? Who was Jan to tell her what she already knew? Who did Jan think she was, cutting her open, removing her insides, and showing everything to her, laying it all out for them both to see and sort through.

Pissed off, shaking with anger, she swept it all back into her arms protectively.

 _"Stop it!"_ she signed, her hands moving so wildly, she could tell even Jan had a difficult time keeping up, _"Just stop it, like you think you know me so well. Like you think you know what is best for me. Always butting into my personal life. Always telling me what to do, how to feel, what to think. I am my own person and I don't need your help!"_

Jan opened her mouth to speak, but Chell hissed - she actually _hissed_ , forcing air through her teeth and lips in such a menacing way that Jan stared at her.

 _"I don't need anything from you! I never did! You are the one who forced your way into my life. Who am I to you anyway? Just a cheap stand-in for the daughter you never had? A case for you to solve? An_ experiment? _You don't really care about what happens to me. You just want to make up for your own fuck-ups. It's why you try so hard to insert yourself into other people's lives, where you aren't welcome. Why don't you just deal with it like the rest of us, and stop using me as your way of trying to make up for your own failures. I am not your experiment, I am not your test subject, I am not someone you can use so you can feel better about yourself!"_

"None of this is about me - this is about you and whatever is inside of you that you wrongly feel that you need to protect. You are not protecting your son when you break down like this and withdraw. You're not even protecting yourself. You are just causing pain and hurt by not letting those that matter know what is going on and why. The only ones you are helping by not saying anything, by not facing anything, are the ones that did this to you."

That was it. The energy within her finally burst outward. Chell could not contain it any longer. The energy had nowhere to go but out, but there were no monitors or cameras to break, nothing of her enemy that she could she destroy, at least not in the way she was being destroyed - _had_ been destroyed.

She suddenly found herself swiping her arm across the countertop (when had she moved into the kitchen?) sending everything on it crashing to the floor. A couple of mugs that had been left out were swept straight into a wall to where they crashed and shattered, sending ceramic shards in all directions. Jan at least jumped out of fright, and for just a hair of a second, Chell felt _proud_ of it.

"Chell!" Jan shouted, rising from her chair, but not making any move in her direction. Even Chell herself had enough consciousness left to realize that she not only felt like a caged animal, but probably resembled one too. It did little to contain her - contain _anything_ \- though.

"Mommy?" came her son's small voice and Chell turned to see him peeking out of the doorway to his room, his blue eyes wide and full of fright and confusion, "What happened? Are you okay?"

" _Go back to your room,"_ she signed.

"Are you scared again? ...Are you and Grandma fighting?" he squeaked, his eyes widening even more upon taking in the scene, the remains of the mugs. "Why are you fighting?"

" _Go back to your room!"_ she repeated, giving him such a severe look, he fell back immediately and disappeared back into his room.

"Don't take this out on him. Take it out on me, so long as you get it out of your system so you can move on."

 _"The only thing 'moving on' is_ you _. GET OUT."_

"I'm not going to leave you alone, Chell. Not like this."

_"LEAVE!"_

Chell's movements were immediate and precise, every bit as much as they had been back at the facility. She made her way around the kitchen counter and into the living room so swiftly, Jan barely had a chance to get herself into any kind of defensive stance before Chell was upon her, grabbing her blouse with both hands and hauling her towards the door. All the blue, orange, and white was drowned out and replaced with red, nothing but _red_ in her vision.

"Chell, stop! I am trying to help you

_(You like murdering people who are only trying to help you - are you going to murder her next?)_

and you are not in your right mind!"

But Chell did not listen any further than that. Jan was speaking, shouting, but nothing of what she said made it through. She was done listening - done being _forced_ to listen. With all of her strength, she shoved the older woman outside of her apartment and into the hallway, barely sparing her enough of a glance in order to sign, " _Never come back, or I will show you why they let me go,"_ before slamming the door shut.

A sharp sob caught her attention and she whirled around, deflating, the wind gusting out of her upon seeing her little son there, crying. He looked up at her, she took a step towards him, and he ran, scampering, almost slipping on the floor in the process, back into his room.

_(We all have blind spots.)_

_(All you ever cared about was escaping!)_

_(You've broken him.)_

Winded, gutted, heart utterly broken, Chell didn't even bother to argue back this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how I feel about how this chapter turned out, although it goes how I wanted it to. Dialogue is simply not my strong suit and sometimes I have a hard time getting it to flow right and make sense. x.x For this reason, kind feedback would be much appreciated, please!
> 
> Thank you so much for continuing to read! I truly appreciate all of you! :3


	9. Left Behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long delay! And I am sorry to present you with such a short chapter after such a long delay. I am not 100% happy with it, so I may do some more editing later, but I feel like it is complete for now. I have a good deal of the next chapter already started, so hopefully not as long of a wait next time. Thank you for sticking around.
> 
> PS: Since a lot of this is heavy stuff, I wanted to tell you that there are brighter times ahead. Promise! It will just take some time. :3

The first thing Chell did after removing Jan from her life was get rid of the pager she had been given. It had become a symbol of her reliance on the older woman and going forward, Chell felt she had no further need of it. It had been a mistake for her to have even accepted it in the first place, she now knew. After the incident, and after Winter had fallen asleep (after having spent the rest of the day in his room, upset, worried, and confused), Chell quietly crept outside and to the garbage bin designated for her apartment building, into which she tossed the small, unassuming device. She then made her way back inside, locked the door behind her, and stood for a long time in the doorway of her son's bedroom, watching him sleep, considering moving him to her bed for mutual comfort before deciding against it and returning to the living room.

There she sat for most of the night, barely moving or doing anything besides breathing, feeling strangely numb. The voices were silent again, and for some reason, this disconcerted her. Their absence left her feeling even more cold and numb and without the slightest motivation to move or do anything besides sit there and feel the quiet passage of time as it flowed around her, somehow leaving her trapped within her own little black hole of reality, unable to move forward, unable to escape, unable to do anything at all. It wasn't until she heard birds chirping outside her window that she realized she had just spent an entire night staring off into that black hole, into nothing.

After checking to make sure her son was still asleep, she wrote a note for him in case he woke up while she was gone and then hiked over to the office and business center of her apartment complex and used their phone to call out of work for the day. She grimaced the entire time while using the phone, but was able to portray through the keypad entry and telecommunications relay service that she needed the day off to make supervisory arrangements for her son. She then asked to be transferred to the on-site daycare where she made arrangements for Winter's care during the day going forward.

He would be starting kindergarten later in the year, but until then Chell needed reliable supervision for him - well, as reliable as she could get, under the circumstances. She was beyond uncomfortable with the idea of leaving him with strangers for any amount of time, much less for the better part of the day, but what choice did she have? She couldn't leave a five-year-old at home alone, especially one as curious as her son. And she sure as hell wasn't going to be asking Jan to come back and babysit for her again. And besides, she reasoned that this would probably be good for him - good for _both_ of them - as this would help prepare him for when he did finally start school, not that she remembered what any of that was like herself. She just wished she could get rid of the sick feeling in her gut over leaving her son with people who were essentially strangers, even if, in essence, Chell had seen them nearly every day for the past six years.

Predictably - understandably - Winter was unhappy with these changes. While he was initially upset after Chell informed him of their new arrangements, it wasn't until she was waking him up early with breakfast already made, ushering him to get dressed, taking him out with her, and arriving at the daycare the next morning that he finally understood the full implication of what this all meant. It was with a rush of final understanding - and a flood of tears and panic - that Winter fully expressed his displeasure with what was happening.

"Do I gotta stay here?" he cried, his voice so small and frail, his sad eyes glistening with anguish.

_(Let's just stay here like this, luv. If- if you want to, we could just call it quits and we could just sit here - forever.)_

Chell felt a cold rush of guilt and almost wanted to change her mind, though in truth some part of her was surprised by his reaction. She had expected him to be at least a little excited at getting to meet new people and play with other kids all day. But then, logically, she also was not surprised, after all the events from the last couple of days.

Still, she had to remain firm in her stance. _"Yes,"_ she signed.

"But why? I don't want to! I wanna stay home with Grandma!"

_(Let's just stay here like this, luv.)_

_"That is not an option."_

_(We'll go with Option B, then.)_

"Why not?"

_"Because it isn't."_

"But-.. I don't understand. Why do I have to stay here? Why can't I just stay with Grandma?"

Chell held back a sigh and tried to steer him away from that topic - _"I'll be right here. I'm not far away if you need me. I'll pick you up as soon as my shift ends,"_ \- but he seemed wholly stuck on it.

"Please," he said, giving her a hopeful look, as if repeating the question would change her mind, "Can I stay with Grandma?"

_(Or I guess Option A, seeing as escaping was actually our first plan.)_

Chell pressed her lips together, _"No."_

His brow fell and the look disappeared, "But... But is it because of what happened the other day, when I climbed the tree? Please, it-.. i-i-it was my fault, not Grandma's, and I won't do it again."

_(We'll get out of here.)_

_"It has nothing to do with the other day._

_(Together.)_

_This is not your fault at all, please don't think that it is."_

_(You and me.)_

"Please don't leave me here. I don't like it here."

_(All you ever cared about was escaping - didn't care about leaving me behind, did you?)_

_"How can you know that? You just got here."_

"Because I want to stay with Grandma. And-..." he trailed off momentarily, casting his gaze away, "You don't like it here either."

_(All the while you were plotting, scheming with your little potato friend over here to be rid of me.)_

For a moment, Chell was stunned. Had her son really been able to read her expression that clearly?

_(Well, I'm onto you now, luv.)_

She inhaled, allowed her face to relax, willing herself to settle into the expressionless state she was once so proud of, and let out a calmer exhale.

_(Your plotting is all over.)_

Winter must have seen the change take place, because his expression darkened even more.

 _(It all - ends -_ here _.)_

 _"I am sorry,"_ she signed, and indeed she did feel sorry, sorry for so much more than he would ever know or understand, _"Please know that this is difficult for me too. The day will be over before you know it. I will come back and visit during my lunch break."_

Winter brightened, but only slightly, "You promise?"

Chell offered him a smile despite the fact that she felt as though her heart was breaking, _"Promise."_

She held through on her promise, and despite her reservations the rest of the day seemed to go on like normal. Perhaps the world was not about to end after all. Perhaps things could finally settle down and she could get on with her life - anxiety, PTSD, guilt, and regret or not. But when they arrived home later that evening to what could only be described as a care package on their doorstep, Chell knew this wasn't over yet.

"What's _that_?" Winter inquired as they approached the bag, which appeared to be laden with medications, food, and other goodies.

Chell peered into it and held back a sneer. She did not answer her son and instead picked up the bag and moved it to the side before ushering them both inside. She distracted his attention away from it by asking him to help her with dinner and asking him how his first day at daycare was.

He shrugged, seeming disinclined to respond, whereupon she asked him again. He let out a small sigh, "It was all right, I guess."

_"Did you make any new friends?"_

"I don't know... How do I know if someone is my friend?"

_(Just thinking back to the old days when we were friends. Good old friends. Not enemies.)_

Chell did not answer right away, instead went about cutting up the vegetables for their salad and sandwiches. She had not prepared for a question like that and all at once realized that she had no good answer.

 _"You both enjoy being around each other,"_ she signed, deciding to keep it simple, for all her limited repertoire on the subject. Then she picked up her knife and resumed her preparations.

_(What happened to those days?)_

"Well, Grandma is my friend," he said softly, cautiously. "Are you and Grandma still friends?"

_(Aww, the poor bastard offspring of the dumbest moron who ever lived wants to know about friendship from his mute lunatic mother who is known for murdering her friends. Well, I guess he wouldn't know about that - but only just.)_

Chell was silent for a long moment, considering his question, before shaking her head.

_(Oh, that's too bad. But who can really say they are surprised.)_

"But-... She enjoys being around us."

_"But I don't enjoy being around her."_

_(But-..)_

"Why not?

( _Is it-...)_

"Because-

_(..-she came too close to seeing you for the monster you really are?)_

"-you were fighting? But-.. the bag. She gave us the bag. Why can't you and Grandma just say you are so-"

Something inside of her gave way suddenly and without any warning. Before she could think, even as part of her was genuinely curious how he knew it was Jan who left the bag, Chell was setting down her sharp utensil a little harder than intended, eliciting a small start from her son.

_"Stop with all the questions. Just stop."_

Immediately she regretted what she had done once she registered both his reaction and the look of frightened surprise in his eyes.

 _"I'm sorry... I don't want to talk about that,"_ she signed, pushing out a sigh, forcing herself to relax, and then forcing a smile. _"I asked if_ you _made any friends today."_

Winter was quiet for a moment, glancing at her as if afraid of answering, and then shook his head.

 _"Well, give it some time,"_ she said. Chell tried her best to be as encouraging as possible, under the circumstances, but the words sounded hollow even to her.

Winter looked like he wanted to say something,

_(It's all over, luv.)_

_(You've broken him.)_

but instead nodded and continued with what he was doing.


End file.
